Karnataka develops app to track home quarantined persons

The Karnataka government has devised a GPS coordinate-based mechanism that tracks persons under order of home quarantine and has instructed them to send selfies or photos to the monitoring team to ensure they are following the isolation norms.

“The government has developed the mobile app and is instructing all persons under order of home quarantine to send their selfies to the government every one hour from home,” said State Medical Education Minister K Sudhakar.

“The selfie or photo contains GPS coordinates. So the location of the sender gets known. If the home quarantine person fails to send a selfie every hour (except sleep time, from 10 pm to 7 am), the government team will reach such defaulters and they are liable to be shifted to a government-created mass quarantine facility,” he added.

Every selfie is examined by a government photo verification team. “So, if wrong photos are sent, too, defaulters will be shifted to a mass quarantine facility,” said Sudhakar.

Government quarantine check teams making house-to-house visits will also be using the app, which is available in Google Play.

The government has also launched the Corona Watch app, which can be downloaded from www.karnataka.gov.in. This allows the user to track the spots visited by patients up to 14 days prior to testing positive. Also, it shows the nearest first respondent hospitals and helpline numbers.