COVID-19: Centre, TN Govt launch Aarogya Setu IVRS
The service, a joint initiative of the Stateinformation technology and health and the Centre'stelecommunications departments and the IIT Madras offerspeople the facility to converse in their mother tongue.
Union Communications Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad andTamil Nadu Chief Minister K Palaniswami together launched theservice through video-conference.
Prasad said Aarogya Sethu mobile app has been alreadylaunched and crores of people have downloaded it, but that wasonly confined to smart phones.
"Todays initiative, is also available for non-smartphones," he said adding there were nearly 120 crore plusmobile phones in the country and reaching the common peopleand give them a helping hand is the idea behind theinitiative.
The IVRS initiative will support timely detection,assistance and guidance which would be a a big emotionalsupport, he said.
Palaniswami said the advantage with the IVRS system isthat it does not "require internet connection and it works insimple, and easy to understand, question-answer mode. Mostimportantly people can converse in their mother tongue."
People can give a missed call or send an SMS to9499912345 and the system calls them back and asks simplequestions and based on the reply provided by them, it givesthem the right advice on coronavirus.
The public could convey their health status andconditions like hypertension, inform government about virusrelated inputs if any (like people with symptoms that may havegone unnoticed earlier) from their localities which will beshared with authorities including the caller's location forfollow up action, the government said.
Based on the information people provide they will beclassified into low, medium and high risk categories forCOVID-19 and in case of high risk, the District levelemergency control room will initiate action as perprotocol. VGNSS