T3 India

Coronavirus

Microsoft updates Bing’s COVID-19 tracker with self-assessment tools and more

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Microsoft’s Bing has now added new features to their online Bing COVID-19 Tracker. Available in 9 different languages so people across India can access it, the Bing Online COVID-19 tracker is also integrated with updates like a bot for self-assessment of users, and a dedicated hub for telemedicine support from some leading healthcare service providers. All of this is available through the Bing app which is freely downloadable on iOS and Android.

Firstly, the Bing COVID-19 tracker not only offers statistics about the affected cases on a global and national scale but particularly for India and some other countries, it also breaks the numbers down to state, district and city level, at least those districts and cities that are majorly affected as of now. Users can get statistics on the number of people infected, recovered and those who died battling the virus.

More importantly, Bing’s online tracker supports languages like Hindi, Bengali, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu, Gujarati, Malayalam and Marathi, which can be accessed through a simple drop-down menu on the top right of the screen. This is helpful for locals to stay updated with real-time data and not have a heavy reliance on news outlets.

Bing’s COVID-19 Online Tracker also has a Telemedicine support hub where users can get online consultations from leading credible healthcare service providers such as Practo, 1mg, Mfine, Apollo Hospitals and more. Government helpline and toll free numbers are also available on that page.

Fairly similar to Aarogya Setu’s self-assessment bot, the tracker also has an AI-powered Apollo Hospitals bot that enables users to perform a self-assessment of symptoms and their risk of contracting COVID-19. It’s available in 4 different languages. The web version is also available here. It’s advisable to have this tool downloaded in such uncertain times. In the meantime, we hope everyone continues following the social-distancing norms and are safe.

Aarogya Setu: A sharp or a blunt weapon against COVID-19?

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India’s battle against the COVID-19 pandemic is going to be hard and is so currently as well. During his speech, PM Modi again, urged everyone to download the Aarogya Setu app which is freely available on iOS and Android devices, as it can prove to be effective for identifying whether the user came in contact with a positively-tested individual. Even though we found the app to be very intuitive with respect to its usage as described below, there is little to no doubt that the lack of clarity and information provided does give rise to a number of issues, with privacy concerns topping the list.

Before getting diverted away with the interface, the main purpose of the app is to notify, trace and support users. Starting with Aarogya Setu’s interface, it’s very easy to use. When opened for the first time, the app shares its function which is to track user interaction with someone who could have tested COVID-19 positive (who also uses the app on their respective device) through Bluetooth and GPS – which always need to be turned on. The user then, must fill out personal details such as her/his name, age, profession and the countries travelled to in the last 30 days.      

The app then wants the user to take a ’20 second Self-Assessment Test’ that goes on to ask if the user is experiencing symptoms like cough, fever, or difficulty in breathing followed by a simple question requesting the user’s health history with diabetes, hypertension, lung diseases, or heart disease. If you haven’t travelled abroad in the past 14 days or come in contact with a confirmed COVID-19 case, the app will tell you that your infection rate is low. And that’s about it.

Now, looking at this as an app for the country, where many still don’t own a smartphone – how effective can this really be? For densely populated towns and cities like Mumbai, we think the app can be effective against COVID-19 but the issue lies with the app needing continuous access to both GPS and Bluetooth data of users.

Sidharth Deb, the Policy and Parliamentary Counsel of the Internet Freedom Foundation, released an extensive paper regarding the analysis of technology interventions for COVID-19 in India. In the paper he mentions that, “The Privacy Policy (of Aarogya Setu) reveals that the application collects the phone’s location data and maintains a record of all the places the user many have visited.” Further ahead he writes that, “As such the Aarogya Setu application appears to clearly be inconsistent with privacy-first efforts which are being considered by technologists and governments as discussed earlier in this paper”, referring to the evaluation against two similar apps to fight COVID-19, namely, the TraceTogether app from the Singapore government and the MIT’s Private Kit: Safe Paths project.

As the pandemic is still raging on, it seems like it is left to us to make a decision, whether to use the app or not – with several valid questions arising if we choose either of the two options. However, one thing is for certain: we are all in this together and we must stay home.