Contact tracing has emerged as one of the key components of Covid-19 pandemic management. In an interview with ET, Abhishek Singh, CEO of MyGov and Digital India Corporation, a government organisation leading the health ministry’s contact tracing efforts, discussed how artificial intelligence tools and data science efforts such as Aarogya Setu helped authorities. Edited excerpts:

How have AI and data science helped in Covid-19 pandemic preparedness?

Data science and AI have helped in identifying the hotspots, or where the emerging hotspots are. For instance, Aarogya Setu helps us in Bluetooth based contact tracing and location based identification of hotspots. It maps (the locations) of an infected person in the last two weeks before testing positive for Covid-19.

So, based on the number of hours these people spent at a particular location, we are able to detect hotspots and areas which are more likely to have cases in the next few days. So that’s why prediction of hotspots becomes much easier, which normally is done when you say x number of cases coming up.