Karnataka's quarantine selfie project fizzles out

big flop

An ambitious plan by the state officials to get those under home quarantine to mandatorily send "selfies" every hour as evidence of them staying under home quarantine has hit a wall.

There are still about 3,000 primary contacts of positive COVID-19 patients under home quarantine in the state (with a majority in Bengaluru). Although they are required to send their selfies to the BBMP, the Palike revealed on Monday that the user participation had dropped.

Munish Moudgil, Secretary, Department of Personnel, Administration and Reforms and in charge of the Covid-19 War Room, said this was largely due to two factors — the ending of the quarantine period for foreign-returned travellers and a change in government policy that advocated using GPS to track those quarantined.

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The official "Quarantine Watch" app to send the selfies was being used as intended in the first days of its implementation, Moudgil explained, saying: "The app was rolled out on April 3 and until April 5, it saw about 40% compliance on each of those three days."

Then something changed. "Around the 6th of April, a major chunk of nearly 30,000 international travellers under observation, who were starting to approach the end of their isolation periods stopped sending selfies," he said.

According to the Department of Health and Family Welfare, 516 international travellers were under home quarantine on April 5 and zero on the following day. But many Category B international travellers discharged from government facilities on the 5th are nevertheless under the mandate of "home quarantine" for an additional 14 days - until April 19.

DH who reached out to several such people was told that they had been instructed not to use the app by medical staff as it was not "official" yet. Others complained that the app was not working properly.

GPS tracking

Moudgil said the BBMP is now focused on getting a single selfie per quarantined individual per day, although he added that the Palike is leaning towards GPS tracking.

"We are waiting for a clarification on what is required. I can tell you that the number of selfies required will definitely reduce. We are still focused on both selfie and GPS. That discussion has been going on for the last few days," he said.

"Selfies are still being considered because the limitation of GPS tracking is that people can breach quarantine rules by leaving their phones at home," Moudgil explained.

Physical tracking

A third element in the equation is sending out contact tracking teams to check on those under quarantine.

According to Dr Swatantra Banakar of the Department of Health and Family Welfare, there are 40 teams statewide to do this work. Moudgil added that 1,000 such personnel were within BBMP limits.