Reopening businesses encouraged to use Aarogya Setu to check health status of staff, other users

New Delhi: Aarogya Setu has rolled out a new feature that will enable organisations to get the health status of their employees or any other user, provided they consent to it, an official release said on Saturday.

With more than 15 crore users, the app hopes to get businesses and the economy back on their feet, using a new feature called ‘Open API Service’ to help allay fears about reopening. The app purportedly alerts business owners to COVID-positive employees, if users consent to sharing their health status. No doubt, businesses and organisations are likely to mandate the sharing of one’s health status as a prerequisite to getting back to work, in order to minimise the risk of the virus spreading to others.

Business entities registered in India that have more than 50 employees can use the feature to query the Aarogya Setu application in real-time to get the health status of their employees or any other Aarogya Setu user, the release said.

The Ministry of Electronics and IT says the open API (application programme interface) that will help businesses access this data will only provide the Aarogya Setu status and name of the Aarogya Setu user with their consent, and will not divulge any other personal data.

Registration for the new service can be done at openapi.aarogyasetu.gov.in.

Since its launch on April 2, Aarogya Setu has traced more than 6.6 million contacts through Bluetooth and found that 27 per cent of those who have been tested were COVID-19 positive, the release said.