Background and aims Tuberculosis (TB) still continues to be endemic in various regions of the world, including in India and needs surveillance, clinical assessment, testing, contact tracing, confirmation of diagnosis with supervised or in-supervised treatment regimens for an effective eradication. We assess the challenges due to COVID- 19 pandemic on management of Tuberculosis and current strategies adopted to mitigate them. Methods We carried out a comprehensive review of the literature using suitable keywords such as ‘COVID-19’, ‘Pandemics’, ‘Tuberculosis’ and ‘India’ on the search engines of PubMed, Scopus, Google Scholar and Research Gate in the month of May 2020 during the current COVID-19 pandemic to assess the impact of COVID-19 on management of Tuberculosis. Results We found considerable disruption in Tuberculosis service provisions both in the primary care and hospital settings. Lockdown, social distancing, isolation strategies and public health guidelines to prevent viral transmission impacted the delivery of all aspects of Tuberculosis care. Conclusions COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact in the delivery of various tuberculosis prevention, surveillance, and treatment programmes. Lockdown and public health guidelines have resulted in tough challenges in traditional management of tuberculosis and has required reconfiguration of methods to support patients including wider use of remote consultations.

As COVID-19 pandemic spread worldwide, policies have been developed to contain the disease and prevent viral transmission. One of the key strategies has been the principle of “‘test, track, and trace” to minimize spread of the virus. Numerous COVID-19 contact tracing applications have been rolled around the world to monitor and control the spread of the disease. We explore the characteristics of various COVID-19 applications and especially the Aarogya Setu COVID-19 app from India in its role in fighting the current pandemic. We assessed the current literature available to us using conventional search engines, including but not limited to PubMed, Google Scholar, and Research Gate in May 2020 till the time of submission of this article. The search criteria used MeSH keywords such as “COVID-19,” “pandemics,” “contact tracing,” and “mobile applications.” A variable uptake of different COVID-19 applications has been noted with increasing enrolment around the world. Security concerns about data privacy remain. The various COVID-19 applications will complement manual contact tracing system to assess and prevent viral transmission. Test, track, trace, and support policy will play a key role in avoidance of a “second wave” of the novel coronavirus severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 outbreak.