Ameya Paleja

Launched over a month ago, the Aarogya Setu app, India’s contact tracing app developed as a means to alert users of contact with a COVID-19 patient who has tested positive, has been a mixed bag of results. While the government has claimed moral victory for being the most downloaded app , privacy critics have been slamming the app for hiding more than it is revealing to the public.   The World Health Organization states that contact tracing has three components, identification (of the person who is infected), listing (listing all people he may have come in contact with) and follow-up (where all listed people need to be monitored for symptoms and signs of infection). Almost all of the work that goes into contact tracing is manual work and generates a lot of data. This data needs to be stored and analysed to identify the potential spread of infection in your area (district, state or country). The manual method works when the number of infected people are low but as numbers increase, the

India went into a surprise lockdown on the 22nd of March 2020, after the Prime Minister called for a voluntary lockdown or “ Janata Curfew ” on a Sunday, in the wake of the spread of Severe Acute Respiratory Infection (SARI) caused by a novel Coronavirus strain, now known as COVID-19. As of that date, India had 360 positive cases of the virus and 7 deaths. Ever since, officials from ICMR (Indian Council of Medical Research) started providing daily updates on the turn of events and the efforts being taken by the institute to determine the extent of spread of COVID-19 in the country.  By its own admission , ICMR is the apex body for formulation, coordination and promotion of biomedical research in the country. Established in British era as Indian Fund Research Association (IFRA), the organisation got its current name in 1949 and was later included into the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare in 1976. The primary aim of the institute is to promote biomedical research to reduce the burd