Every patient in home quarantine under watch in Haryana

Using the mobile phone location data and satellite-based global positioning system (GPS), the Covid Quarantine Alert System (CQAS) notifies the enforcement authorities every time a Covid-19 patient under watch makes a violation.

Infected persons under home quarantine in Haryana better stay put in their homes as their movements are being tracked round the clock to prevent them from spreading the disease.

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An asymptomatic infected person or those having mild symptoms are eligible for home isolation, as per the Union health ministry guidelines. However, keeping a tab on the movements of such patients and making sure they adhere to strict self-isolation at all times remains a continuous challenge.

Using the mobile phone location data and satellite-based global positioning system (GPS), the Covid Quarantine Alert System (CQAS) notifies the enforcement authorities every time a Covid-19 patient under watch makes a violation. The tracking system works even if the patient has not installed Aarogya Setu app on his mobile device.

Every day, the state government receives hundreds of alerts from National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) about Covid-19 patients and their primary contacts breaching the geo-fence, a virtual perimeter around a geographical location.

“The alerts from NDMA are received several times a day and conveyed to the district authorities. Such patients are then approached – by cops making telephone calls as well doing physical checks – to drive home the point that they just cannot violate home isolation protocol,” said a top official.

Additional chief secretary (health) Rajeev Arora said the use of technology in tracking the patients and making hotspot predictions is imperative to their efforts to break the chain of transmission.

National Health Mission (NHM) director Prabhjot Singh explained that the authorities record the home latitude and longitude of Covid-19 patients put under home isolation to monitor their movements.

“Once a person jumps the quarantine and breaches the 300-metre radius of geo-fence, the violation gets logged using the mobile tower location data. Subsequently, the system triggers an alarm to the authorities on the basis of mobile device location of the patient,” Singh said.

Officials said on being diagnosed as a confirmed or suspected coronavirus patient, every person put in home isolation has to give an undertaking that he or she will be liable to be acted upon as per the prescribed law for any non-adherence to self-isolation protocol. Such persons are required to maintain strict self-isolation at all times for the prescribed period. During this period, they are required to monitor their health and those around them, interact with the surveillance team or call centre number 1075 if their health deteriorates or any of their close family contacts develop any influenza-like illness symptoms.

HISTORY TRACKER AND HOTSPOT PREDICTOR

The state government is also using another web-based platform ITIHAAS to check the travel history of infected patients as well as identify potential hotspots. “The ITIHAAS system uses mobile tower locations to find out how much time an infected patient or a person having influenza-like symptoms has spent in a particular area. This helps us make projections about an upcoming hotspot. Subsequently, we initiate intensive house-to-house surveillance in that area to check the spread of infection,” the NHM chief said.

BREACH GEO-FENCE, GET CAUGHT

Using the power under the Indian Telegraph Act, the NDMA tracks the mobile phones of Covid-19 patients and their primary contacts

The state government invokes Section 5(2) of the Indian Telegraph Act to gain access to a patient’s mobile phone data in the interest of public safety

The standard operating procedure for tracking the mobile device allows data collection for Covid management only.

The mobile number has to be erased from the tracking system once the requirement of location monitoring is over.