Amidst the rising number of Corona cases, the government has resolved to digital aid by making the newly launched Aarogya Setu app mandatory for the government and the private sector workers. The Aarogya Setu app monitors the patients, provides advisories to the user along with tracking the virus.
The app uses the phone’s Bluetooth and GPS features to determine whether the user belongs to one of the red zone areas and if they have been near (within 6 feet) a COVID-19 infected person by scanning through the database of the known cases across India. Along with calculating the risk of the user catching the virus, it provides news about the local and national COVID-19 cases and also serves as an E-pass for when the user is traveling.
Ajay Prakash Sawhney, the Secretary of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, said, “In order to formulate appropriate health responses for addressing the COVID-19 pandemic, data pertaining to individuals (the people of are infected or in high risk of being infected) is urgently required.” The information collected by the Aarogya Setu app is broadly categorized into demographic, contact, self-assessment, and location data. While Demographic data includes information such as name, mobile number, age, gender, profession, and travel history, Contact data is about any other individual that the user has come in close proximity with and the location at which this contact occurred. Self-assessment data stands for the responses provided by that individual to the self-assessment test administered within the app and the Location data comprises of the geographical position of an individual.
Other countries such as Australia, Colombia, and Malaysia have also launched apps to keep track of the COVID-19 cases in their respective countries. The Indian Government using the digital platform to tackle the spread of the virus can be a gamechanger against our fight with COVID-19.
