Government Considering Scaling Up Arogya Setu As An E-Pass For Citizen Mobility During Pandemic Period

The union government is considering a proposal to use the recently rolled out mobile app Aarogya Setu, has an e-pass for moving around of the citizens, The Hindu Business Line reported.

Developed under a committee set up by the Prime Minister’s Office with active involvement of NITI Aayog and Ministry of Electronics and IT, Aarogya Setu operates as a contact tracing app for tracking COVID-19 patients and alerting user if any known person in their vicinity has tested positive.

Currently available in both Android and iOS, the App enables people to perform a self-assessment on the risk of novel coronavirus infection. The app will then calculate this based on their interaction with others, using cutting edge Bluetooth technology, algorithms and artificial intelligence. The app finally calculate an infection risk score for the user based on sophisticated parameters.

Aarogya Setu become the world’s fastest app to reach 50 million downloads in just 13 days, NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant said on Wednesday (15 April).

Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his address to the nation on 14 April appealed to people to download the app. District administration has been asking all educational institutions, departments etc to encourage downloading of the app.

The recent updates to app introduced two new features called “e-pass” and “Covid Updates.” The e-pass feature was introduced with a “coming soon” disclaimer, suggesting it will still take some time for it to become fully functional.

Once operational, the e-pass feature will act as a filter for individuals visiting public places. The app will have three colours Green, Orange and Red based on the health and contact matrix of an individual.