Now, app to keep track of contact tracing in Gurgaon

Gurgaon: The Haryana Shahari Vikas Pradhikaran (HSVP) has developed a mobile application to monitor contract tracing work being carried by various public health centres (PHCs), plug in gaps and prepare a database of information related to Covid-19 patients in the district.
The app, expected to be launched in the next few days, will be for internal use by government agencies and is expected to improve coordination between the health department, the Municipal Corporation of Gurgaon (MCG), district administration and HSVP in dealing with the pandemic.
HSVP (Gurgaon) administrator Jitender Yadav said all data related to Covid-positive patients will be uploaded on the application twice a day by MCG.
Every PHC will have a separate login ID, and they will get information on patients in the area falling under their jurisdiction, along with other details, on the app.
After tracing the contacts of patients in their areas, PHCs will have to fill in their details on the app, and it will be updated immediately.
Covid-related data of the last two months will also be uploaded to the app. “This will enable us to get real-time updates on contract tracing and related information. The app will help prepare a database which can be used by any government agency for planning and other purposes,” Yadav added.
HSVP estate officer-1 Bharat Bhushan Gogia said the application will analyse the data and provide reports as well. “The app will provide us with analysed data in the form of graphs, pie charts and tables. It will help us find areas which need immediate attention,” he said. The app will also have details of patients under home isolation.
At present, data related to Covid-19 patients and contract tracing is maintained manually, leading to anomalies. In some instances, data has even gone missing.
Contact tracing, one of the major aspects of containing the spread of the novel coronavirus, has emerged as one of the biggest problems in the battle against the virus in Gurgaon, which is among four “districts of concern” in the country.
Tracing of the contacts of a large number of patients remains incomplete, as many have gone “missing” after giving wrong or fake numbers and addresses while testing. When authorities tried to get in touch with them about their test results, they couldn’t be reached.
The loophole was highlighted during the recent audit carried out to assess the district’s Covid preparedness by additional chief secretary Vijai Vardhan. With the increasing number of cases in Gurgaon and other parts of the state, the Haryana government had carried out an audit of Covid preparedness at the district level to take stock of the need for augmenting existing health infrastructure to deal with the rapid spread of the virus in coming weeks.
HSVP officials said they are trying to ensure contact tracing is done within 12 hours of the Covid test results being declared by the health department.
Contacts of people whose results come in the morning will be traced by the evening, and for results that come in the evening, contact tracing would be done the next morning.