Hyderabad: App to keep tabs on quarantined people

Hyderabad: The Department of Telecommunications (DOT), C-DOT and telecom service providers (TSPs) have joined hands and developed a new application to identify the Covid-19 quarantine violations. The app has been successfully tested, it is learnt. According to DOT sources, "the application automatically triggers an email or sends an SMS to the authorised government agencies, when an identified corona positive or a potential person, who was assigned for quarantine, but moves away from his quarantine location."

The newly developed application, the sources said complies, with the privacy of the persons. For using this application, the state and central agencies designated for monitoring movements of quarantined persons have to seek the approval of the home secretary of either the State or the Centre, as the case may be.

The requests should be made for the specified mobile phone number to request DOT to provide the information in the form of alert SMS, email on pre-defined number email of the agency in case of violation of geo-fencing erected around quarantine spaces.

On obtaining approvals, the government agency has to send the mobile numbers to the designated officers concerned in the Disaster Management Wing under a Deputy Director-General. In turn, the DDG will forward the list to the Covid-19 Quarantine Alert System (CQAS) housed in the C-DoT.

On receipt of numbers, the CQAS prepares data TSP-wise lists of mobile numbers and runs a query on TSPs location-based system. Then, the location data provided by the TSP system would be run on the application and geo-fencing assessment would be performed. "As part of the process, the location details would be fetched periodically 15 minutes, to begin with, from the TSPs network on secure VPN."

The moment the mobile number used by a person under quarantine moves away from the geofencing mark, indicatively 300 meters, the application will trigger email and SMS to the State and the Central agencies for appropriate action.

However, the monitoring of mobile numbers collected should be strictly used only for health management in the context of Covid-19. Any misuse would invite penal actions under the applicable laws.

Besides, the numbers and the data received for the case would be deleted after 4 weeks from the time of the initial request made for the monitoring of the number in the Covid-19 context, the DoT sources added.