Update (6:31 pm): The government of India issued a press release, announcing the launch of Aarogya Setu. Arnab Kumar, the Program Director of Frontier Technologies at NITI Aayog, confirmed its authenticity to MediaNama. As per the press release, the app has been developed through a public private partnership (PPP) under the guidance of National Informatics Centre. Kumar refused to tell us who the private partners for this app are. The app has "privacy-first by design and as an essential element". Earlier: As the number of positive cases soar in the country, the Indian government today quietly released a COVID-19 contact tracing app for Android and iOS devices. The Aarogya Setu app — meaning "bridge of health" — uses Bluetooth and location services to track if a user came into contact with a person “who could have tested COVID-19 positive”. If a user of this app tests positive, the government will contact all other registered users that the infected person came in contact with over the last 30 days. According to its terms of use, the government cannot be held liable for the app’s accuracy. The app was developed by developed by National Informatics Centre (NIC). This might be the CoWin-20 app that NITI Aayog was developing. NITI Aayog refused to comment whether it is the same app and which companies were involved. The government is racing to trace contacts of COVID-19 positive people, especially as the Health Ministry has identified 20 existing and 22 potential "hotspots" of the virus in the country. At the time of publication,…
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