The Centre is using powers under the Indian Telegraph Act to “fetch information” from telecom companies every 15 minutes to track COVID-19 cases across the country.

What is Geo-fencing?

• A geofence is a virtual perimeter for a real-world geographic area.
• A geo-fence could be dynamically generated—as in a radius around a point location, or a geo-fence can be a predefined set of boundaries (such as school zones or neighbourhood boundaries).
• The use of a geofence is called geofencing, and one example of usage involves a location-aware device of a location-based service (LBS) user entering or exiting a geo-fence.
• This activity could trigger an alert to the device’s user as well as messaging to the geo-fence operator.

Tracking COVID-19 patients

• The government has tested an application that triggers e-mails and SMS alerts to an authorised government agency if a person has jumped quarantine or escaped from isolation, based on the person’s mobile phone’s cell tower location.
• This “geo-fencing” is accurate by up to 300 m.

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