Nellore: 'Aarogya Setu app not of much help'

Nellore: The Aarogya Setu app, which has been aimed to track any information on the nearby positive cases and for protecting the user from the threat of infection is not of much use. It is not alerting or giving any beep sound immediately after contacting the affected person. It gives only suggestions to the people after some time that they had contacted a high-risk person.

The application basically works on the Bluetooth. Experts opine that as soon as the user contacts an infected person, he should get a warning message or beep sound from the phone activated through Bluetooth. Then the user can move away from the place without delay.

Initially, it was not designed to meet the huge demand of people due to the non-availability of data of Covid patients or high-risk persons. But has been gradually improved and now it is tracking the contacts of the registered users and alerting them.

Users normally provide their personal information like gender, full name, age, profession, and countries travelled within the last 30 days and their health status as soon as the application asks. The user updates the information. On the basis of information, the app alerts the app user after ascertaining the health condition of the contacted persons.

Very recently, the app is having a provision of 'See Recent Contacts' under 'You Are Safe' message where the user can check an alert message whether he contacted a person affected by coronavirus or high-risk person.This alert system is working only after some time and the user is not getting the warning on the spot.

There is another provision to check the status of closed ones sharing a code to them, but it works based on protecting individual privacy where the other person should share the code. Both can check their status even from a far-off place.

"It would be great if the user gets on the spot alert that he is very close to a Covid-19 patient or a high risk person so that the user can move away from the place. Warnings after the contact is practically useless where the app enhances apprehensions," said SV Praveen Kumar, a techie. He added that even though around 15 crore Indians are using the app, it is not much useful to the user.