The Kamrup (metro) district administration has started to use a mobile app-based solution called COVID Suraksha from Tuesday to monitor the status of each of the home-quarantined persons and the activities of the surveillance teams round the clock.

Official sources in the metro district administration said that the move was initiated to keep a constant check on the health of those in home quarantine.

“It was felt that an appropriate system should be developed to monitor these quarantined people on a daily basis in order to keep an eye on their health. Though each quarantined person was assigned to a surveillance team consisting of health workers, there was no proper mechanism available with the district administration to monitor the functioning of the surveillance team — whether they have visited each of the quarantined members,” an official source said.

Kamrup (metro) deputy commissioner Biswajit Pegu, being faced with such a scenario, requested the National Informatics Centre (NIC) to provide an IT-based solution. Subsequently, the NIC, Assam, suggested that a mobile app-based solution called COVID Suraksha may be used for this purpose.

The software has two parts — one is a web-based application portal and the other is the mobile app.

First, details of each of the quarantined members were collected and entered in the portal as part of the registration process.

Similarly, details of surveillance team members (with smartphones) were also fed into the portal.

“On completion of the registration process, a QR code for each quarantined member was generated from the portal. The QR codes were then printed and pasted on the front of the house of each of the quarantined members. The surveillance team during its visit will scan the QR code of the quarantined member and fill a simplified questionnaire about patient’s health, whether he or she has fever or cough and send the same directly to the server using the app. The district administration can now view the status of each quarantined member from the dashboard,” said an official statement from the metro administration. The technology at present covers 2,169 people in home quarantine in the city.