Seoul (CNN Business) South Korea is one of the world's most tech savvy countries. So when the deadly novel coronavirus outbreak reached the Korean peninsula, app developers there knew exactly how to react: They started coding.

Mobile apps that help track the disease in South Korea ranked as six of the top 15 downloads on the country's Google Play app store on Thursday. Developers of some apps — which source their data from public government information — told CNN Business that they have been getting a surge in downloads since launching their products earlier this month.

"The installs are increasing about 20,000 every hour," said Bae Won-Seok, one of the developers of Corona 100m, an app that allows people to see the date that a coronavirus patient was confirmed to have the disease, along with that patient's nationality, gender, age and where the patient visited. The person using the app can also see how close they are to coronavirus patients.

The app has been installed more than 1 million times since it was launched February 11, according to Google Play. Bae said that a recent surge in downloads, sparked by the escalating number of cases in the country, crashed the application's server.

Corona 100m, a coronavirus app available in South Korea.

Lee Jun-young, the developer of Corona Map, said he made his app because he found the government data hard to understand. Although health officials release locations that show where coronavirus patients have been, the official information isn't very visual.

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