Aarogya Setu app now mandatory for people residing in red zones.
As the country goes under the third iteration of the nationwide lockdown, the government has made it mandatory for all public and private sector employees to install the Aarogya Setu app on their smartphones. The app has also been made mandatory for people residing in COVID-19 Containment Zones. The government is taking such initiatives to enable contact tracing in those areas.
Now, the government has made the Aarogya Setu app compulsory for all the central government employees. In its directive, The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) said, “Use of Aarogya Setu app shall be made mandatory for all employees, both private and public. It shall be the responsibility of the head of the respective organisations to ensure 100 percent coverage of this app among the employees.”
In order to ensure more people are using the application, the government has also issued new guidelines, which suggest that the app will come pre-installed on new smartphones.
As mentioned above, the Aarogya Setu app will soon be made available for feature phones in order to target a larger audience. According to a report by Economic Times, the Centre is planning to partner with telecom operators Bharti Airtel, Reliance Jio and Vodafone-Idea to enable calls to their subscribers. These voice calls will be made in all Indian languages and will use an Interactive Voice Response System (IVRS) from a central helpline number – 1921
As for phones like JioPhone that run on KaiOS and can support applications, the government is working on bringing an app for the same. Aarogya Setu app has already crossed the 80 million download mark on smartphones and now the government aims to reach to over 900 million phones across the nation.
Aarogya Setu app basically uses GPS and Bluetooth to perform contact tracing and ensure one has not come in contact with a COVID-19 suspect or a patient.
