Bengaluru Using Technology To Test, Trace And Treat COVID-19 Cases In The City

New Delhi: COVID-19 pandemic has brought the world economy down to its knees. government and authorities look for different measures to control the spread of the infection. Battling against COVID-19 in a city like Bengaluru is a huge challenge. But the city has taken inspiration from countries like South Korea and Singapore, Bengaluru is tackling the pandemic using their IT resource base and technology like Global Positioning System (GPS).

Bengaluru authorities have set up a ‘war room’ in the city’s corporate headquarters and are working around the clock – gathering data, processing it – and deciding the course of action based on these inputs.

A COVID-19 task force, comprising IAS officers with expertise in the fields of technology, medicine and healthcare have been assigned to work in this war room.

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An IAS trainee, working in the war room explained to NDTV,

So we have different containment zones marked on our GPS. On screen, if we open one of the containment zone in the city of Bengaluru,  say, Padanaipura, it will show me the first case reported in the containment zone, in this zone, it was on April 6 and this is what we call the time series.

He further explained,

Here using exact location via GPS, with an accuracy of 5 meters, we have plotted it on the heat map. This helps us understand the progression of cases in this containment zone, which as of now has reached 46 cases, from April 6 till today.

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The IAS trainee further explained that the data s recorded in a heat map, where the colour starts with yellow and based on the concentration of cases it moves on to orange and red.

So, we will see that the red spots are most concentrated area and accordingly we can scale up the testing in this particular cluster, he added.

The Nodal officer in charge of the war room told NDTV,

Technology helps us to track the cases in real-time and the data is dynamic in nature. So, we can ensure there’s no gap left behind in tracing, testing and treating of the COVID-19 cases. Using technology we are able to find out the right people to be treated, right people to be tested and the right household to be contacted.