From an E-learning to E-commerce, the Government of Nepal has been proactively launching different platforms to tackle COVID 19 using information technology.
The recent work that the government exclusively released to the general public is a contact tracing app named COVID NP.
Right after you download an app, it will ask you to give permission on Location, Bluetooth, and Contact number.
With that personal information, the app can let people know if they have been close contact with someone whose COVID 19 report is positive.
From the app dashboard, you can notice the official data of infected, recovered and death persons both locally and globally.
But the interesting part about this app is it lets you find the total number of quarantine bed, patients in quarantine, isolation bed, and patients in isolation based on different provinces.
TL;DR
Features of COVID NP
Self COVID-19 Test
General health question related to fever, cough, shortness of breath, past 21 days your and family member travel history. Based on your given answer it will show you the result such as the Green Zone.
Public Announcement
In this section, you will get the official public announcement related to COVID 19 from the Nepal government to fight against rumors and factless information.
Doctor’s Counseling
With this app, you can also connect with the doctor from your home. You need to fill-up the necessary details with common symptoms and medical issues.
COVID-19 Learning
To generate COVID-19 awareness, you can find the learning materials such as quarantine rules, preventive measures, and other myth busters.
COVID-19 Certification
After going through the learning information, you can sign in to get COVID-19 Certification from the Government of Nepal. To get a certification, you need to answer 20 multiple choice questions related to the COVID-19 virus.
Suspect Reporting
If you found COVID-19 suspected person in your neighbourhoods or community then you can easily submit the report and help government to take action.
Emergency Call
As the name defines, you will find the emergency number of Health Ministry and other hotline numbers for communicating the problem to the concerned authority.
How this Contact Tracing App works?
The working principle of Contact tracking is simple. To participate in contact tracing, you need to give access to your device location or GPS coordinates.
You need to turn on Bluetooth which monitors your device proximity to another mobile device and exchange the anonymous ID also knows a ‘Key’.
Let’s assume if, after 7 days, someone got diagnosed with COVID 19 and submitted those test results in an app. Now, people who have been contacted with COVID 19 patients will be sent push notification requesting to take the self-isolate precaution immediately.
Does this App violates Data Privacy?
As we know, this app collects your sensitive private information such as Location and Bluetooth which is the core element of this contact tracing app.
If you check the about section of the app, you will find the official information in which it says the personal data will be collected without compromising user privacy and data security measures.
Final Say
The main purpose of the contact tracing app is to track down the infected people near to your location and in the worse cases, it should alert people to self-isolate as soon as possible.
This digital contact tracing will help to find out the infected person on a large scale unless if we trained them to use the app properly.
Lastly, while writing this review, I found a bug that is making the screen on and off. Hope these issues will be solved.
Download – COVID NP App
Do share with us what you think about this contact tracing app in the comments below.