WHO head Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus lauds Aarogya Setu app, says it helped identify COVID-19 clusters

World Health Organisation (WHO) Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has lauded India’s Aarogya Setu app, saying that it has helped public health departments identify COVID-19 clusters and expand testing.

"Aarogya Setu app from India has been downloaded by 150 million users, and has helped city public health departments to identify areas where clusters could be anticipated and expand testing in a targeted way," the WHO chief said at a media briefing.

As reported by the Indian Express, Ghebreyesus also mentioned the contract tracing applications used in Germany (Corona Warn app) and the United Kingdom (the National Health Services' COVID-19 app), among others, that helped healthcare systems in tracing probable infected persons.

India's COVID-19 tracing app was launched by PM Modi on April 3. It was developed by the National Informatics Centre (NIC) under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY).