‘200k people with basic phones took health test via tele-survey’

NEW DELHI: Health assessment of around 200,000 people has been taken as part of a tele-survey launched last month for those who have feature phones and cannot access contact tracing Aarogya Setu app, officials aware of the matter said. The Aarogya Setu Interactive Voice Response System was launched on April 21 to reach 900 million feature phone users across the country after a successful pilot in Tamil Nadu.

Union information technology ministry officials said 600,000 people called on the toll-free number for the survey. “A few people have been identified as unwell through the survey and the data has been given to the respective state officials,” said a ministry official, without specifying the number of people identified as unwell or those who have been tested after the assessment.

The official said data collected from the survey has helped in finding some hotspots through a variety of data sets. “...the inputs from the system are forwarded to states,” said the official on condition of anonymity without elaborating.

As per the ministry’s estimates, there are 1.2 billion mobile phone users in India, but only 350 million have smartphones. The remaining 900 million are feature phone users.

A user has to place a call on the number ‘1921’ which then prompts a survey. People are asked if they have come in contact with anyone tested positive for Covid-19 as part of the survey under which details like gender, age, and symptoms are sought. They later receive messages telling them if they are safe or not and are also advised to download the Aarogya Setu app if they have smartphones.

The helpline and survey is managed by a team from the Ayushman Bharat health insurance scheme and the National Informatics Centre in 11 regional languages.

V Kamakoti, a professor at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, led a team in Tamil Nadu to pilot the tele-survey in March. The team screened 15,000 people over the phone and helped the state detect suspected Covid-19 patients, as well as indications of the hotspots.

As many as 115 million people have downloaded the Aarogya Setu app till now. The government on Sunday eased the requirement for office-goers to mandatorily install the Aarogya Setu app, asking employers instead to ensure “on best effort basis” their staff have the tool.

The app is still mandatory for those taking the special trains or arriving from abroad by the repatriation flights. Independent software researchers and privacy experts have criticised the app as it could aid in illegal surveillance.

THE OFFICIAL SAID DATA COLLECTED FROM THE SURVEY HAS HELPED IN FINDING SOME HOT SPOTS THROUGH A VARIETY OF DATA SETS