COVID-19: Centre, TN Govt launch Aarogya Setu IVRS

As part of efforts to combat coronavirus, the Central and Tamil Nadu governments on Thursday launched the Aarogya Setu Interactive Voice Response System service which is aimed at guiding people, speed up preventing virus spread, detection, tracking and treatment measures. The service, a joint initiative of the State information technology and health and the Centre's telecommunications departments and the IIT Madras offers people the facility to converse in their mother tongue.

Union Communications Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad and Tamil Nadu Chief Minister K Palaniswami together launched the service through video-conference. Prasad said Aarogya Sethu mobile app has been already launched and crores of people have downloaded it, but that was only confined to smart phones.

"Todays initiative, is also available for non-smart phones," he said adding there were nearly 120 crore plus mobile phones in the country and reaching the common people and give them a helping hand is the idea behind the initiative. The IVRS initiative will support timely detection, assistance and guidance which would be a a big emotional support, he said.

Palaniswami said the advantage with the IVRS system is that it does not "require internet connection and it works in simple, and easy to understand, question-answer mode. Most importantly people can converse in their mother tongue." People can give a missed call or send an SMS to 9499912345 and the system calls them back and asks simple questions and based on the reply provided by them, it gives them the right advice on coronavirus. The public could convey their health status and conditions like hypertension, inform government about virus related inputs if any (like people with symptoms that may have gone unnoticed earlier) from their localities which will be shared with authorities including the caller's location for follow up action, the government said.

Based on the information people provide they will be classified into low, medium and high risk categories for COVID-19 and in case of high risk, the District level emergency control room will initiate action as per protocol.PTI VGNSS PTI PTI.

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