Daily Covid Bulletin - May 25

Karnataka records 93 new cases and domestic air travel resumes in most part so the country.
And Arogya Setu? The app might be here to stay, says Aman Nair a policy officer at the Centre for Internet and Society.
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Hello. This the daily Covid update from Deccan Herald. I’m Akhil.
On the bulletin today:
Karnataka records 93 new cases till date..
Domestic air travel resumes across nation...
Also in the bulletin, Aman Nair, a policy officer at Centre for Internet and Society,
on why we need to continue to ask questions about Arogya Setu
and its future in a post-pandemic world
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It's almost impossible to assume that covid-19 will be sorted within a year or eradicated with in 2 years -
so that can be used as a justification to continue the application
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But first, a look at the daily figures
At the time of this recording,
India has over eighty thousand active cases in the country right now...
and has recorded over four thousand deaths.
The ICMR has tested more than 30 lakh samples for the novel coronavirus so far
and more than 90 thousand samples in the last 24 hours.
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Before we take a look at the figures from Karnataka,
here are some key updates from the country...
The Supreme Court said today that
it found the circular allowing Air India to fill up middle seats in flights - "disturbing".
The flights referred by the Supreme Court were being operated
to bring back Indians stranded abroad, despite the COVID-19 pandemic.
It said that the centre should seek to maintain social distancing...
and be more worried about the health of the citizens rather than that of the Airline.
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Moving on to the numbers from Karnataka…
93 cases were reported from the state today,
a respite from the high numbers being reported so far.
72 of the 93 cases have a travel history to Maharashtra.
Other travel histories include Tamil Nadu, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, the UAE and Muscat.
The highest number of cases today have been reported from Udupi district
with 32 positive cases.
This includes 27 from Maharashtra and 2 from the UAE.
Kalaburagi has reported 16 cases and Yadgiri 15,
all of whom have returned from Maharashtra.
Bengaluru Urban has 8 new cases...
and they’re a mix of domestic and international travel,
contacts of previously diagnosed patients, and one with SARI.
Rest of the districts have reported cases in single digits.
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A 55-year-old woman from Bengaluru Rural,
who had been diagnosed with Severe Acute Respiratory Illness passed away
to Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome and a 43-year-old-man from Dakshina Kannada
with liver cirrhosis passed away on the day he was admitted to the hospital.
With this,
the state has reported 2,182 cases in total...
of which more than 1,400 are active cases.
705 patients have recovered, while 44 have died.
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Moving on to a few updates from Karnataka,
After two months,
domestic air services resumed at Kempegowda Airport in Bengaluru.
An AirAsia flight to Ranchi became the first domestic flight...
to take off at 5.15 am this morning.
However, nearly 30 departing flights were cancelled leaving many passengers frustrated.
The last minute cancellations were triggered by,
institutional quarantine mandated by the State Government...
for passengers arriving from Red Zone cities.
Additionally, there were limitations imposed by the various states
adding to the confusion.
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Union Minister DV Sadananda Gowda,
who flew into Bengaluru from the high-risk Delhi,
was not subjected to the mandatory institutional quarantine.
Gowda said he was exempted under the guidelines,
since he belonged to the essential pharma sector..
and that he was the minister in charge of pharmaceuticals.
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As air travel resumes between most cities,
passengers have been asked to download Arogya Setu onto their smartphones.
The contact tracing app has been in the eye of the storm..
for not being transparent with its functioning, alarming privacy activists.
My colleague Amulya spoke to Aman Nair,
a policy officer at the Centre for Internet and Society...
to ask what happens to Arogya Setu, once the covid threat is gone.


Thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you for having me.

Um, so my first question to you is this. Why has all over the world, the contact tracing apps have become to take solution for Coronavirus?

So I think it's important to understand that contact tracing has a really long history in epidemiological images in the logistic sort of fields, and it's been successfully utilized in the case of a number of other viruses and diseases. What's special about Coronavirus, though is that you're essentially dealing with a virus of highly transmissible and also incredibly deadly. And so in those situations, you're sort of limited in how far manual contact tracing can go. And so that's why a lot of states seem to be turning towards digital contact with patients to try and combat the virus. And I think the danger of lies in current models of contact tracing that we assume it's going to be the solution in and of itself.

Coming to Arogya Setu in particular particular, why has it alarmed privacy activists in India?

So there are a number of issues with Arogya Setu beginning with privacy. So one of the issues is the inability to understand what exactly happens with the data. So, we are unsure because we are unaware of the nature of the code of Arogya Setu what exactly the application collects in terms of data, how long this data is stored for and what all this data can be used for. While the government has made certain efforts to try and clarify that most notably the protocol that they release, the conditions of the protocol remain vague. A simple example is that the sunset clause included in the protocol simply speaks about the protocol itself, and nothing about the actual data. On top of that you also have security concerns, again, stemming from the fact that we don't understand the architecture of this application, and that the government has expressly prevented the reverse engineering of this application. And finally, also, we have the issue of accessibility in terms of individuals who may not have smartphones. But also people who may have specific impairments or disabilities know someone who's blind may not be able to easily access the application and then to therefore make it mandatory poses its own set of issues.

Okay, so what happens, then, you know, this crisis has gone, and the government has this whole database – so what's going to happen.

So I mean, that's the million dollar question. And the thing is, no one really knows. What I would say is that governments don't tend to give up data easily over the course of history. And it's not only that you're dealing with data collected during the course of the pandemic, you're essentially dealing with the creation of a completely new surveillance infrastructure. So, one of the underlying issues is that while government may not make something mandatory in law, it's entirely possible that the way it's implemented in a societal level makes it mandatory on the ground. I mean, to give you like a really simple example, when I called and asked for a haircut, I was told that I would have to show my Arogya Setu application otherwise I wouldn't be allowed in. And so you're essentially worried about the indirect effects as well as the direct surveillance effects. You're worried that while the government may not or may make promises to not entrench it within our legislation, that the prolonged use rate over the course of time will nonetheless entrench it in the way we think about society.

What is what's our future going to be from a from the context of how we have responded to Coronavirus the way we have turned to technology.

So there's obviously the future in terms of the actual existing technology itself, the possibility of Arogya Setu now being mandated for a wider range of things than it was initially meant to. So for example, you know, there's confusion right now what whether it was mandatory for a travel. And then also I think you have a broader paradigm of states now turning exclusively to technology to be the solutions of their problems, specifically, health problems. I think, traditionally, and from now on, you're going to see a complete shift in how policy is thought of, especially in the mainstream. I think you're going to see a lot of government officials in the future attempting to solve health issues through a purely technological framework, and while technology has its place in our healthcare framework. I think something that's been really interesting is that you see a lot of healthcare officials and healthcare policymakers stressing the fact that technology is merely one aspect of that, and that our societies in the future can't be completely guided by technological elements, especially in this space.

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That's all from us today.

For the latest updates, log on to deccanherald.com.
Stay safe and we’ll see you tomorrow.