Amid the on -going shutdown in India, to battle the spread of the pandemic coronavirus, India launched the Aarogya Setu (Health Bridge) app; a Bluetooth and GPS-based application which alert users who may have come in contact with people who later test positive for COVID-19.
The app that was most checked on, was initially available to India's roughly 500 million smartphone users on Google's Android and Apple devices, but not to around 400 million users of more basic feature phones.
Within a week, a version of the app will be rolled out to more than 100 million users of the $9 JioPhone - a cheap, internet-enabled feature phone that runs on a mobile operating system named KaiOS, a senior government official said.
Launched by Reliance Industries' telecoms unit in 2017, the phone gives users access to 4G mobile data and apps including Facebook Inc's popular WhatsApp messenger.
"We are pushing it ... the testing is going on," said the official who declined to be identified as the plan is not public. Contact tracing apps such as Aarogya Setu are being used in an attempt to speed up the process of identifying, testing and isolating people exposed to the virus before they spread it to others.
Also, many countries around the world are using similar apps, some such as Australia and Colombia are turning to technology from Apple and Alphabet's Google.
