India to use wristbands to monitor locations, temperatures of COVID-19 patients |

[bhaigan]

India said Wednesday that it plans to manufacture thousands of wristbands that will monitor the locations and temperatures of corona virus patients and help perform contact tracing.

The wristband project aims to track quarantined patients and aid health workers and those delivering essential services. India is ramping up surveillance as it begins to ease one of the world’s strictest virus lock downs.

It has 19,984 confirmed cases of corona virus, including 640 deaths, and experts fear the epidemic’s peak could still be weeks away. Thousands of wristbands are expected to be deployed, but an exact figure has not been released.

The wristbands mirror a similar program in Hong Kong, where authorities used bands to monitor overseas travelers ordered to self-isolate.

Broadcast Engineering Consultants India, a government-owned company, will present wristband designs to hospitals and state governments next week and work with Indian start-ups to manufacture them.

George Kuruvilla, the company’s chairman, said the wristbands are likely to be rolled out in May.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has urged the country’s 1.3 billion people to download a government contact-tracing app called Arogya Setu to help determine their infection risk. It has been downloaded over 50 million times since it was launched on April 2.

Kuruvilla said the wristbands could integrate data captured in the app.

He said the wristbands will be used to monitor the movements of quarantined patients, both at home and at hospitals, and any spikes in their body temperature. They will send an alert to public health officials if patients move outside their quarantine zone. The devices will also have an emergency button that wearers can use to call for help.

The wristband will let health workers know if people they encounter have been to high-risk areas or have been in contact with an infected person, while aiding those delivering essential services such as groceries or medicines.

It will capture all the places an infected person has visited, the routes they took, determine if they had any foreign travel and identify those who were in their vicinity. It will also tell people if a sick person is nearby.

It will also help in creating a geofence, or a virtual perimeter, around areas being monitored, such as common meeting places, public transit or places for religious gatherings. A person leaving or entering the virtual perimeter could be alerted through the wristband.

 

The monitoring has raised privacy concerns.

Dr. Anant Bhan, a public health and bioethics expert, said it is “important to factor in privacy protections and data protections” for both apps and wristbands.

“It is also important to ensure that where possible, consent is sought for the use of location tracking and sharing. Such initiatives could be useful for public health and surveillance purposes, but should not be used to stigmatize individuals or communities,” he said.

[bhaigan]

Wish Andhra Pradesh and TG should use same technology to track  covid19 patients

[kakatiya]

4 minutes ago, bhaigan said:

Wish Andhra Pradesh and TG should use same technology to track  covid19 patients

Mundhu tests cheyamanu man.. in India any state..there are 10 times more cases than what being report d.

 

Political ego addam vachi they are declaring minimum number of cases that too severe cases minus quarentine covid positive cases.

 

Guntur is one good example. 

[bhaigan]

Coronavirus: People-tracking wristbands tested to enforce lockdown

[bhaigan]

12 minutes ago, kakatiya said:

Mundhu tests cheyamanu man.. in India any state..there are 10 times more cases than what being report d.

 

Political ego addam vachi they are declaring minimum number of cases that too severe cases minus quarentine covid positive cases.

 

Guntur is one good example. 

Andhra Pradesh Govt. is doing its job bhayya, doing highest number of tests per million in entire India. Not sure why TG is doing such a low tests

[bhaigan]

Bulgaria is the latest country to test a wristband that can track people during the coronavirus pandemic.

Up to 50 residents in Sofia will be given a device that can record their movements using GPS satellite location data.

Several nations are testing similar wristbands to make sure people are obeying orders to stay at home.

South Korea and Hong Kong have also been using electronic trackers to help enforce quarantine.

The trial in Bulgaria will use Comarch LifeWristbands, developed in Poland.

As well as confirming a person is staying at home, the device can monitor the wearer's heart rate and be used to call the emergency services.

In South Korea, people found to be violating quarantine rules can be ordered to wear a tracking band.

[bhaigan]

 

[bhaigan]

SOUTH KOREA MINISTRY OF INTERIOR/EPA South Korea's band alerts police if people leave the house while in quarantine

[bhaigan]

The device was introduced after people were caught leaving their smartphones at home to avoid detection.

The band can alert the authorities if the wearer leaves home or tries to remove the device.

Campaign groups, including Privacy International, have warned that the coronavirus pandemic could be used as a "power grab" by some governments.

It has said new measures should be "temporary, necessary, and proportionate".

"When the pandemic is over, such extraordinary measures must be put to an end and held to account," Privacy International said in a blog post.

Other places testing wearable gadgets include:

• Belgium, where residents are testing a social distancing wristband that vibrates if it comes within 3m (9.8ft) of another band
• Lichtenstein, where one in 10 residents will be given a band to track "temperature, breathing and heart rate, and transmit it to a lab in Switzerland for further investigation". Later this year, a further 38,000 residents will be given a band
• India, which has announced plans to manufacture thousands of location and temperature-monitoring bands for people in quarantine
• Hong Kong, where police can be alerted if people wearing an electronic band leave the house while under quarantine

 

[bhaigan]

The Romware One used in Antwerp vibrates when it is close to another band

actually china introduced same technology in Wuhan

[bhaigan]

Hong Kong is using wristbands to enforce quarantine

[bhaigan]

Wearable devices could also help the adoption of contact tracing.

Contact tracing aims to keep a record of who a person has been close to for long enough to catch coronavirus, so cascades of alerts can be sent if they test positive for Covid-19.

Apple and Google have proposed a privacy-focused method using Bluetooth to automate the process, which the UK's NHSX is also exploring.

However, about 12% of smartphones in the UK lack the Bluetooth Low Energy (BTLE) functionality needed for it to work.

https://www.bbc.com/news/av/embed/p08bbhzb/52409893  - contact tracing

Some researchers suggest simple Bluetooth wristbands could be used by people who do not own a smartphone.

"It would be an option to increase coverage and there are also cheaper Bluetooth devices that could have the basic functionality without being a full smartphone," said Christophe Fraser from the Oxford Big Data Institute.

"Wearable Bluetooth devices could indicate in a very basic way whether contact has been made."

[bhaigan]

India wants to build an ultra-intrusive ‘wristband’ to track coronavirus patients’ every move

 

After launching its coronavirus contract tracing app, Aarogya Setu, earlier this month, India is preparing to introduce smart wristbands to monitor movements of COVID-19 patients.

According to a report by the Economic Times, the government is in the process of procuring thousands of wristbands to keep an eye on patients in hospitals and folks under quartine in their homes.

[bhaigan]

A technical document by the Broadcast Engineering Consultant India Limited (BECIL) described the band as an “Intelligence investigation platform & tactical tool to detect, prevent and investigate threats to national security using CDR, IPDR, Tower, Mobile Phone Forensics Data.”

 

The idea is to pair this hardware solution with the Aarogya Setu app, and get information about patients and people under quarantine including their location data and people they’re in contact with.

However, the hardware requirements listed in the document are very intrusive as it demands to know the daily routine of people wearing said band. The document said it:

• Should be able to identify a suspects behavior, see what he or she does on specific days of the week, where does he or she order food from, where does the suspect go for regular walks, where does he/she work during the day, where does he/she sleep at night.
• Should be able to Easily identify close contacts, frequent contacts as well as occasional contacts such as Uber drivers etc.
• Trace where this person has been and if he or she has been to areas known for being high-risk locations.
• Should be able to collect information like where the suspect has spent most of his/her time and who all he or she has met. Zero in on connections with watch list suspects.
• Should identify common friends to multiple COVID-19 infected persons [sic].

Some of these requirements are quite invasive to people’s privacy, and some of them seem quite complex to execute in practical scenarios. Case in point, identifying common friends of multiple patients. However, if the system has a large trove of data, it’s possible to make those connections.

Even if your data is anonymized, researchers have argued that it’s easy to identify a person through location data.  Plus, as this system aims to collect data of people you came in contact with, their location data is exposed as well.

As many privacy experts have pointed out in the case of the Aarogya Setu app, there’s no mention as to how the data will be handled once it’s with the government or how for how long it’ll keep the data. With no data protection law in place, there are no regulations on data handling by the government. So, this new system can pose very critical privacy risks that can invite snooping on citizens.

[bhaigan]