Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) in association with the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MHFW) has launched India’s own location-based COVID-19 tracing app called Corona Kavach. The app is not ready yet, so it has been launched in Beta.
The goal of the app is to use a person’s smartphone data to track their location and alert if they are at risk of being exposed to Coronavirus. It uses location for an hour and alerts if you have been in contact with a person tested positive for COVID-19.
The app is available only for Android. When you download, it asks for you to answer sir different questions to check if you could be suspected COVID-19 patient. These questions are about breathing, body temperature, your recent foreign trip, body ache, and dry cough. It also asks if you have been in contact with someone who returned from a foreign country.
Based on your answers, it puts you in one of the categories. If you are into the orange category, you need to see a doctor. The yellow is for quarantine and the red category means you are infected. Whenever you are out of the house, tap on a button to activate the “Kavach” and it will track your movements for an hour. If you are close to someone who has been marked as infected or quarantine, you will get an alert.
It asks for the mobile number for the registration and uses the OTP method for number verification. The also shows stats of active cases are in India.
This app needs a lot of cooperation from the public. If you see recent news how people of India are trying to hide their symptoms and are openly infecting people even after they are asked to be in quarantine, I am sure you know there’s no cooperation.
I also tried using the app and it seems it needed proper alpha testing before launching this beta version. Even if the app is ready, people of India need to understand their role in stopping the spread of infection.
It seems the Play Store link is not working. Maybe the department has pulled the app from Play Store after received complaints of numerous bugs. You can still download the app from the official website.
