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Aarogya Setu's active users plummet due to pandemic fatigue: MyGov CEO
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SME Times News Bureau | 01 Nov, 2020
Due to the pandemic fatigue, the number of people checking the Aarogya
Setu App has come down, Abhishek Singh, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) at
MyGov and Digital India Corporation, said on Wednesday and requested
people to become more vigilant and use it.
Due to the unlockdown,
resumption of offices and the ensuing festive season, pandemic fatigue
has taken over people, at a time when the total number of Covid-19 cases
in the country are just short of the 80 lakh-mark.
"People have
become lethargic, the number of people checking the Aarogya Setu App has
come down. We are carrying out campaigns to get people to start using
it again," Singh said in an interview with IANS, but refused to
attribute it to lack of trust due to the privacy concerns.
He
added, "We have been asking airlines and cinema halls to use the open
API based mechanism and consent based sharing mechanism. This should be
used in Metro also, otherwise when the cases increase, we will have a
bigger problem. People will have to start becoming vigilant and start
using the App."
Aarogya Setu, a Bluetooth-based application, was
launched on April 2 in a bid to limit the spread of the virus, with
contact tracing and mapping of likely hotspots.
The App was
designed by MyGovIndia, and has over 161 million users, identified over
3,500 hotspots. It has traced millions of people till now.
"Contact
tracing and identification of emerging hotspots has been helpful in
ensuring that we are able to control the pandemic. Maybe this is one of
the reasons due to which our fatality rate is low. The App also
optimises the testing capacity in a more targeted manner," Singh said.
He further said that the application has been successful in terms of health monitoring but there are limitations.
"Not
everybody has the App or have given their correct mobile numbers. The
App is being used only by less than 20 per cent of the population. To
that extent, the App has been able to serve the purpose and give out the
data of the potential hotspots."
"In India, another limitation
is that there are only 500 million smartphone users. Those who do not
have the app are traced manually by the health authorities. This App
thereby shows just a statistical sampling based on which we get some
indications," Singh said.
Speaking on the privacy issue
pertaining to the speculation on data-sharing with third party, Singh
said that no such case has come forth in the last seven months.
"There
are no privacy issues. Data is not shared with anyone. Only if you test
positive, the data goes to the servers and only to the health
authorities to help the people," he said.
In May, in a video
interview with IANS, Singh had emphatically defended the App and pushed
back against the steady hum of privacy concerns from the critics. He
had said that it is the safest across all mobile apps that Indians
currently use, and a digital public good that Indians should be proud
of.
Besides this, he also lauded the platform, saying that the
evidence that we could build Aarogya Setu in a short time will lead to
building other digital platforms for health services in the future.
"We
will see what can be done to the App after the pandemic is over. There
are many communicable diseases and we can think of that, but right now
the focus is on the pandemic only," he said.
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