World Health Organization Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Tuesday that India’s Aarogya Setu app helped identify coronavirus clusters, The Indian Express reported. Tedros also mentioned contract tracing applications from Germany and the United Kingdom.
“The Aarogya Setu application in India has been downloaded by 150 million users,” Tedros said. “Aarogya Setu has helped city public departments to identify areas where clusters could be anticipated and increase Covid-19 testing in a targeted way.”
The Aarogya Setu app alerts users when they come in close contact with an infected person. The government had launched the app in April.
Tedros also said that some cases of reinfection have been recorded around the world. He said the vast majority of people around the world remain susceptible to the virus, as seroprevalence surveys show that less than 10% of the world’s population has been exposed to the virus.
On Monday, the WHO chief had warned against suggestions that herd immunity might be a realistic strategy to stop the coronavirus pandemic, saying such an approach was “simply unethical”. Herd immunity occurs when majority of a population becomes immune to a disease through vaccinations or through the mass spread of a disease.
In July, Tedros had praised the successful efforts at containment of the coronavirus in Dharavi slum in Mumbai.
India’s Covid-19 tally rose to 71,75,880 on Tuesday as the country reported 55,342 new infections in 24 hours, the lowest since mid-August. The country’s toll rose by 706 to 1,09,856 – also the lowest since the country reported 638 fatalities in July. India’s active cases stood at 8,38,729, while the number of recoveries rose to 62,27295. The country’s recovery rate is 86.78% and the mortality rate stood at 1.53%.
The global coronavirus count crossed 3.77 crore and the toll rose to 10,78,868, according to Johns Hopkins University. The number of recoveries crossed 2.61 crore.
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