New Delhi, Apr 2 (IANS): In a move to curb the spread of coronavirus, Meghalaya government has devised a digitally-enabled monitoring mechanism to keep a vigil on the health status and movement of people suspected to be infected with the deadly virus.

The tracking system has been developed by the Centre for Digital Financial Inclusion (CDFI). With the help of this, government officials can capture information about people with recent travel history or those who have come in direct contact with such people.

People identified by the administration receive automated interactive voice response calls every day which enables them to track identified individuals with symptoms such as fever, cough, and breathlessness.

Individual's responses are recorded and mapped on a big data analytics platform to track prevalence of symptoms, identify clusters, individuals with persistent and critical symptoms and quantify the number of citizens in self isolation.

Another application named StaySafe Meghalaya also monitors the movement of people who are advised to be in home quarantine.

Once downloaded, the app automatically captures the location of the individual and identifies those individuals who may have moved beyond a threshold distance from their home location.

"I am glad that we are able to track about 10,000 individuals every day using various tech interventions," said Sampath Kumar, Commissioner and Secretary of Health and Family Welfare Department.

He added, "Meghalaya is fortunate that we do not have any COVID-19 positive cases yet. Over the last two weeks, we have put in place a strict surveillance protocol for all the people who have entered the state."