As a sudden increase in the number of COVID-19 positive cases in India is being observed, especially after the religious gathering of around 2000 Tablighi Jamaat followers in Markaz Nizamuddin at Delhi came into light, Delhi Government has now become more alert.
Delhi Police To Track Mobile Phones To Enforce Quarantine
By seeing the rising concern, the Delhi Government has ordered their police to track mobile phones of the people in home-quarantine in order to find out whether they have stepped out of their homes or came in contact with any other.
This announcement was made by Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said on Wednesday, where he said that the government had already handed more than 25,000 phone numbers to the police for the tracing.
The Chief Minister had also earlier claimed that there had been no occurrence yet for indicating that the coronavirus disease was in a community transmission stage in the national government. He also said that the tracing of mobile phone would help in finding out the violation of quarantine but also to identify their possible contacts.
CM Arvind Kejriwal said, “We had given 11,000 phone numbers to Delhi Police for tracking yesterday. Today, 14,000 more numbers were sent,”
This decision of using the smartphones was taken at his meeting with Lieutenant Governor Anil Baijal. The chief minister also said that this decision has been inspired by the countries like Singapore that are already using technology for making sure quarantines in followed properly.
The use of smartphone locations for locating a person in quarantine was started in China, and was later adopted in Singapore very quickly. This method has been also adapted by many countries in Europe. Last week, the data and privacy authority of UK has also confirmed that it wasn’t a violation of the privacy of an individual.
To make sure that the people who are ordered to stay in isolation do not move out of their homes has been a great challenge for all the states across the country. Health departments along with the police had originally started pasting notices outside homes of people under self-quarantine as well as encouraged the neighbours to report if any violation is done.
However, these steps were not quite enough, therefore, Karnataka has also came up with a mobile application that requires people to send geotagged selfies each hour. This system has been also adopted in Telangana as well.
Leave a Reply