Among the several measures taken by countries around the globe to prevent the spread of COVID-19, the World Health Organisation has highlighted the role played by digital technologies.?
Apps such as the Aarogya Setu were recently hailed by the World Health Organisation for the same.
During a?media briefing?on COVID-19, WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom applauded the digital technologies being used by countries to check the spread of the virus.?Aarogya Setu, the COVID-19 contact-tracing app being used in India was among one of them.
Highlighting the role played by the app, the WHO chief noted that, "the?Aarogya Setu app?from India has been downloaded by 150 million users.¡± He further mentioned that the app ¡°has helped city public health departments to identify areas where clusters could be anticipated & expand testing in a targeted way."
Apart from the one being used in India, Dr Tedros mentioned similar apps being used by other countries too. He noted, for instance, that the Corona-Warn app in Germany, has been used to transmit 1.2 million test results from labs to users in its first 100 days.
Similarly, in Denmark, notifications received through a mobile application resulted in the testing of more than 2,700 people for Covid-19. In the UK, a new version of its NHS UK app had more than 10 million downloads within the first week.
In the briefing, Dr Tedros clarified that having the virus go unchecked in an illusion of attaining herd immunity is not the way to go about for battling Covid-19. He highlighted that the virus transmits mainly between close contacts and any outbreaks caused by it can be controlled through ¡°targeted measures."
Digital technologies are proving to be a big help for this across the world. With a direction for countries to follow such proven methods for making it through the pandemic, Dr Tedros closed the briefing on the remarks, ¡°WHO is hopeful that countries will use targeted interventions where & when needed, based on the local situation.¡±