India eyes wristband surveillance of virus patients

India said yesterday that it plans to manufacture thousands of wristbands that will monitor the locations and temperatures of COVID-19 patients and help perform contact tracing.

The wristband project aims to track quarantined patients, aid health workers and those delivering essential services as India ramps up surveillance while beginning to ease one of the world’s strictest virus lockdowns.

India has 19,984 confirmed coronavirus cases, including 640 deaths, and experts fear the pandemic’s peak could still be weeks away. Thousands of wristbands are expected to be deployed, with no exact figure provided.

Broadcast Engineering Consultants India, a government-owned company, will present wristband designs to hospitals and state governments next week and work with Indian start-ups to manufacture them.

George Kuruvilla, the company’s chairman, said that the wristbands are likely to be rolled out in May.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has urged the country’s 1.3 billion people to download a government contact-tracing app called “Arogya Setu” to help determine their infection risk. It has been downloaded over 50 million times since it was launched on April 2.

Kuruvilla said the wristbands could integrate data captured in the app.

He said the wristbands will be used to monitor the movements of quarantined COVID-19 patients, both at home and at hospitals, and any spikes in their body temperature. It will send an alert to public health officials if patients move outside their quarantine zone. The device will also have an emergency button that wearers can use to call for help.

The wristband will let health workers know if people they encounter have been to high-risk areas or have been in contact with an infected person, while aiding those delivering essential services such as groceries or medicines. It will capture all the places an infected person has visited, the routes they took, determine if they had any foreign travel and identify those who were in their vicinity. It will also create a virtual perimeter around areas such as public transit or places for religious gatherings. A person leaving or entering the perimeter could be alerted through the wristband.