The Indian govt's contact tracing app Aarogya Setu has drawn various controversies amid privacy concerns and its effectiveness. People have questions like, has this app helped in the identification of positive cases or areas emerging as COVID hotspots.
Niti Aayog’s Arnab Kumar who is part of the Aarogya Setu development team revealed significant data regarding COVID as per TheHindu Business Line report.
Kumar said that the total number of Aarogya Setu users has reached to 13.5 crores. This is close to 10% of the Indian population. As of 25th June, 1.33 lac users of the app are COVID positive. This amounts to 28% of total positive cases(4.73 Lac).
The app seems to help in contact tracing as it has alerted more than 28 lac people, for being at risk. Out of these, about 1.5 lac users were shown in "High Risk" and their samples were tested for COVID. More than 35000 users out of these 1.5 lac people were found COVID positive which amounts to 23.33% chance of "High Risk" people turning COVID positive.
App has helped in earlier identification of people at risk and putting them in isolation and detection of COVID. Earlier detection of COVID does save lives. In Mumbai, the large number of COVID deaths occurred within four days from detection in the month of April-May indicating they were brought to the hospital very late.
Aarogya Setu app has also helped authority for earlier identifications of more than 11000 emerging hotspots areas based on the self-assessment test of the users.
As we know, only 10% of our population is using this app and 1.33 lac is COVID positive among them. The sample size of 10% population should be good enough to make projections for the whole country. If we take the projection of this data in the context of the full population, we may have more than 13.3 lacs people actually infected form COVID by the third week of June in our country. This is at least double than reported/tested cases.
Amid privacy and trust issues, the Aarogya Setu app seems to be effective for contact tracing and early identification of infection so far, at least among users. It would only become more effective with a further increase in the number of users. Govt has aimed that around 45 crore people would use this app. Although users are increasing rapidly, it is still far behind of target.
Niti Aayog’s Arnab Kumar who is part of the Aarogya Setu development team revealed significant data regarding COVID as per TheHindu Business Line report.
Kumar said that the total number of Aarogya Setu users has reached to 13.5 crores. This is close to 10% of the Indian population. As of 25th June, 1.33 lac users of the app are COVID positive. This amounts to 28% of total positive cases(4.73 Lac).
The app seems to help in contact tracing as it has alerted more than 28 lac people, for being at risk. Out of these, about 1.5 lac users were shown in "High Risk" and their samples were tested for COVID. More than 35000 users out of these 1.5 lac people were found COVID positive which amounts to 23.33% chance of "High Risk" people turning COVID positive.
App has helped in earlier identification of people at risk and putting them in isolation and detection of COVID. Earlier detection of COVID does save lives. In Mumbai, the large number of COVID deaths occurred within four days from detection in the month of April-May indicating they were brought to the hospital very late.
Aarogya Setu app has also helped authority for earlier identifications of more than 11000 emerging hotspots areas based on the self-assessment test of the users.
As we know, only 10% of our population is using this app and 1.33 lac is COVID positive among them. The sample size of 10% population should be good enough to make projections for the whole country. If we take the projection of this data in the context of the full population, we may have more than 13.3 lacs people actually infected form COVID by the third week of June in our country. This is at least double than reported/tested cases.
Amid privacy and trust issues, the Aarogya Setu app seems to be effective for contact tracing and early identification of infection so far, at least among users. It would only become more effective with a further increase in the number of users. Govt has aimed that around 45 crore people would use this app. Although users are increasing rapidly, it is still far behind of target.
Find us on