Effective Contact Tracing for COVID-19 Using Mobile Phones: An Ethical Analysis of the Mandatory Use of the Aarogya Setu Application in India

Several digital contact tracing smartphone applications have been developed worldwide in the effort to combat COVID-19 that warn users of potential exposure to infectious patients and generate big data that helps in early identification of hotspots, complementing the manual tracing operations. In mo...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Cambridge quarterly of healthcare ethics
Main Author: Basu, Saurav (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Cambridge Univ. Press 2021
In: Cambridge quarterly of healthcare ethics
Further subjects:B pandemic ethics
B Covid-19
B contact tracing
B Public Health Ethics
B India
B Aarogya Setu
B contact tracing applications
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Summary:Several digital contact tracing smartphone applications have been developed worldwide in the effort to combat COVID-19 that warn users of potential exposure to infectious patients and generate big data that helps in early identification of hotspots, complementing the manual tracing operations. In most democracies, concerns over a breach in data privacy have resulted in severe opposition toward their mandatory adoption. This paper examines India as a noticeable exception, where the compulsory installation of such a government-backed application, the “Aarogya Setu” has been deemed mandatory in certain situations. We argue that the mandatory app requirement constitutes a legitimate public health intervention during a public health emergency.
ISSN:1469-2147
Contains:Enthalten in: Cambridge quarterly of healthcare ethics
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1017/S0963180120000821