Since there is no cure for the COVID-19 disease, the only way to keep ourselves protected is by following social distancing and washing hands. Additionally, governments can implement robust contact tracing systems to avoid more people getting infected by the virus. ‘Arogya Setu’ is an app built for this very reason for Indians. The application is yet to be a month old but the government is already planning to force new smartphone buyers to register.
The Arogya Setu app is available on both Android and iOS. However, there are still a vast majority of Indians with feature phones. The country is still looking into ways to enable contact tracing for those set of citizens.
Before that, the Indian government is planning to force smartphone makers to pre-install the app on their devices. Additionally, it is planning to appoint nodal agencies that will be working together with smartphone companies to implement the setup process of new phones with a non-skippable registration process for Arogya Setu app.
However, it is not known how and when it will be carried out. Because India is yet under lockdown and smartphone manufacturing facilities are still shut down. If the plan gets formalized, we can expect the process to begin as soon as the facilities reopen.
‘Arogya Setu’ has had a remarkable positive response ever since its release. It is reported to have crossed 7.5 crores (75 million) downloads, out of which, 5 crores+ (50 million) alone is from the Google Play Store. The app uses location and Bluetooth data to track the people affected by the coronavirus.
It has a record of documented COVID-19 patients as well as location history of registered users. By using the app, healthy individuals can avoid crossing paths with the affected persons. It also has sections to self-assess symptoms, issue e-Pass, monitor the status of cases, and more.
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