WHO Chief hails India’s Aarogya Setu app for its help in identifying COVID-19 clusters

The Head of World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus hailed India’s COVID-19 contact tracing ‘Aarogya Setu’ app as one of the technological tools which successfully helped public health departments in identifying clusters of virus and expand its testing.

During a media briefing, WHO Chief emphasized that the ongoing pandemic can be overcome quickly if countries use the right tools for identifying the impact of the virus. He also further noted the need to implement the tried and tested tools such as contact tracing and self-isolation to break the chain of the COVID-19 transmission.

"The Aarogya Setu app from 🇮🇳 has been downloaded by 150M users, & has helped city public health departments to identify areas where clusters could be anticipated & expand testing in a targeted way"-@DrTedros #COVID19

— World Health Organization (WHO) (@WHO) October 12, 2020

WHO appreciates India’s response to COVID-19:

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus while talking about the indigenously developed ‘Aarogya Setu’ app highlighted that the app that has been downloaded in India by 150 million users is one of the successful examples of technologies which helped in tracking the virus.

"Digital technologies are helping to make tried-&-tested public health tools even more effective, such as mobile applications to support contact tracing efforts.
🇩🇪’s Corona-Warn app has been used to transmit 1.2M test results from labs to users in its first 100 days"-@DrTedros

— World Health Organization (WHO) (@WHO) October 12, 2020

He added that the app helped city public departments in order to identify the areas where the clusters can be anticipated so that COVID-19 testing can be increased in a targeted way.

Earlier, WHO Chief had also praised India’s efforts in curbing the spread of COVID-19 in Mumbai’s Dharavi Slum and stated that despite the intense outbreak of the virus, it was brought under control almost immediately.

WHO’s work with other countries to evaluate their digital applications:

World Health Organization has also been working United Kingdom, Germany among others in order to evaluate the effectiveness of their digital applications.

WHO chief, in the latest media briefing has also informed that contract tracing apps from countries such as United Kingdom’s NHS COVID-19 app and Germany’s Corona Warn app and similar ones in other countries have helped the healthcare systems in successfully tracing the probable infected persons.

About Arogya Setu app:

The Aarogya Setu app was launched by the Indian government in April 2020. It aims to alert the users when they come in close contact with the COVID-19 infected person. The made in India app also make the users aware if there are chances that they can be infected with the virus.

Few weeks after the app was launched, cyber law experts and critics have shown concerns on the data safety and had mentioned that it was too close in nature and without any appropriate data protection measures.

Following the criticism, the Indian government released the source code of the app in an attempt to promote transparency.