Effective Contact Tracing for COVID-19 Using Mobile Phones: An Ethical Analysis of the Mandatory Use of the Aarogya Setu Application in India

Abstract

Several digital contact tracing smartphone applications have been developed worldwide in the effort to combat COVID-19 that warn users of potential exposure to infectious patients and generate big data that helps in early identification of hotspots, complementing the manual tracing operations. In most democracies, concerns over a breach in data privacy have resulted in severe opposition toward their mandatory adoption. This paper examines India as a noticeable exception, where the compulsory installation of such a government-backed application, the “Aarogya Setu” has been deemed mandatory in certain situations. We argue that the mandatory app requirement constitutes a legitimate public health intervention during a public health emergency.

Developing a Minimum Dataset for a Mobile-based Contact Tracing System for the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…In the initial months of the pandemic, contact tracing measures were recorded through manual data collection tools (eg, in Excel sheets, spreadsheet), which was a time-intensive, resource-demanding, and error-prone process (18,40). Additionally, the conventional approaches did not always offer inclusive data about the number of investigated contacts, the nature of the relationship between cases and contacts, the number of contacts, who in turn, become cases, and the first and last days of follow-up surveillance (21,41).…”

A Review on the epidemiology and characteristics of COVID-19

“…Furthermore, Favipiravir drug clinical trial is also being done in India [88]. With the advancement of smartphone technology, India launched an App for both android and ios which is a useful intelligent software for awareness spreading of the coronavirus for the citizens of India [89]. This app provides various latest information like the total number of infected, the total number of the recovered, infected area, read zones, several peoples using this app near me within a radius of 50 km, 200 km as well as latest news and health services, etc.…”

Evidence-based health policies and its discontents – Comparative global and Indian perspectives with a focus on the COVID-19 pandemic

“…The popularity of the Aarogya Setu, the indigenous COVID-19 contact tracing app in India which became the largest downloaded app in the world is one such instance. [ 20 ] Similarly, COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy worldwide can correlate with the extent of public trust in scientific experts. There are growing global concerns on the reduced transparency and resultant lack of citizen engagement with public scientists that fuel distrust against validated EBPs.…”