Mumbai: With a view to effectively combat the coronavirus pandemic, a digital application named ‘MahaKavach’ has been designed, which will help the health authorities in contact tracing and tracking of quarantined COVID-19 patients.
This platform has been developed after extensive inputs from on-ground officials and by studying the existing methodologies deployed in other countries and in different states of India, an official release issued here said Wednesday.
The effort to make the digital application is a joint initiative by the National Health Authority, the Maharashtra State Innovation Society, Nashik District Innovation Council, Nashik Municipal Corporation, Digital Impact Square (A TCS foundation initiative), and the Kumbathom Foundation.
The ‘MahaKavach’ app is currently being used by the Nashik civic body, and will come into use across Maharashtra soon, the release added.
The digital application allows improvement in two major processes essential for combating the virus – contact tracing and quarantine tracking.
Contact tracing involves investigating and tracking the citizens who might have come in contact with a COVID-19 patient. ‘MahaKavach’ allows the administration to track the location history of the citizen, the release informed. It allows checking if he/she has visited other public places such as shops, restaurants, markets, transport hubs so as to identify the mass infection hotspots, the release added.
The ‘MahaKavach’ app uses location mapping technologies to streamline the entire process, thereby saving both time and valuable resources. The administration thus has a real-time dashboard developed through MahaKavach showing possibly infected places, areas, and people.
The second important aspect of the platform is the ability to supervise and track quarantined patients. As per the guidelines issued by the World Health Organisation (WHO), citizens who have been advised by the medical officers must quarantine themselves for at least 14 days.
However, as it has been observed that people are reluctant to do so or often unknowingly fail to quarantine themselves effectively. This endangers the people around them and highly increases the risk of community transmission.
According to the release, ‘MahaKavach’ allows the administration to effectively supervise and digitally track such cases by installing this platform on their smartphones.
The platform has features such as geo-fencing and selfie-attendance, which allows the home quarantines to be restricted in a digitally-mapped area and in case of breach an alert is given to the local health officials. The patient will also be required to provide regular updates to the authorities via selfie-attendances.
Only citizens advised by the health officials will be allowed to use the MahaKavach app, the release said.
Agencies