Last week, the Government of India had said that it will soon release a COVID-19 tracker mobile application and had added that the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MietY) and govt think-tank Niti Aayog were working on it.
Now, the government’s National Informatics Centre (NIC) has officially launched the app called Aarogya Set which will help people identify the risk of getting affected by the Coronavirus. The app is available in 11 languages and has been launched for both Andriod and iOS.
After installation, the application asks for the user’s mobile number, location data (via GPS and Bluetooth access permission), and matches the traveling history with that of the Coronavirus positive patients, documented by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) data.
The app offers location generated social graph and also warns user not to venture out to a particular area where the COVID-19 patient had stayed or traveled. It also checks if you had ever accidentally or unknowingly came in contact with the affected patient.
The user-privacy policy of the app says that the collected data will be shared with the Government of India only if the user shows COVID-19 symptoms. It also claims that there is a proper mechanism in place so that the user-identifiable information never gets disclosed to the public.
