International Journal of Community Medicine and Public Health | April 2021 | Vol 8 | Issue 4 Page 1802 International Journal of Community Medicine and Public Health Juneja S et al. Int J Community Med Public Health. 2021 Apr;8(4):1802-1808 http://www.ijcmph.com pISSN 2394-6032 | eISSN 2394-6040 Original Research Article “Aarogya Setu”- India’s COVID-19 contact tracing mobile application: an assessment of awareness and utility among residents of India during the COVID-19 pandemic Sumeet Juneja 1 *, Snehil Singh 1 , Sanjay Gupta 1 , Roopesh Gupta 2 , Shashikant Ray 1 , Arpita Gupta 1 , J. P. Shivdasani 2 , Harshad Thakur 2 INTRODUCTION World Health Organization (WHO) had declared Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) as global pandemic on 11th March 2020. 1 Since the onset of 1 st cluster of unusual pneumonia cases in Wuhan in late December 2019, the rapid human to human transmission of virus via droplets and close contacts resulted in unprecedented, swift and frantic global spread affecting 215 countries and territories with confirmed cases globally more than 30 million and in India more than 5.3 million (as on 16 th September 2020). 2 It created panic amongst the medical, public health and general community due to lack of treatment and vaccine available. The most essential defence remained the fundamental of public health measures, such as personal hygiene and mass physical distancing. WHO recommended following infection prevention and control (IPC) measures to mitigate COVID-19 spread: 1) ABSTRACT Background: As the world was hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, various steps were taken to curb its spread. Government of India introduced contact tracing “Aarogya Setu” app. In this study we assessed the awareness and utility of the app among the residents of India which in turn affects its usage. Methods: This was a community based online cross-section survey. The snowball sampling technique was used for data collection. The questionnaire was developed to understand the knowledge and practices pertaining to COVID-19 but for publication purpose, items related to Aarogya Setu application have been analysed. The data was collected in the 1 st week of July 2020. Frequency tables for various socio-demographic details of the participants were formed. Chi Square test of significance was used to analyse the awareness and utility of the app against sociodemographic characteristics. Results: Majority of the participants were aware about the app, using it and found it useful. The awareness and use of the app was found to be significantly associated with gender, age, education and occupation and the usefulness was found to be significantly associated with gender and occupation. Awareness was found to be higher among males, age group 45-59 years, with professional degree and government employees. Conclusions: These findings can be taken by policy makers while considering promotion of the application. Future steps should involve developing relevant training and communication material to enhance the use of the application. Keywords: Aarogya Setu, Awareness, COVID-19, India, Utility 1 National Cold Chain Vaccine Management and Resource Centre (NCCVMRC), National Institute of Health and Family Welfare (NIHFW), New Delhi, India 2 National Institute of Health and Family Welfare (NIHFW), New Delhi, India Received: 16 December 2020 Revised: 21 January 2021 Accepted: 26 February 2021 *Correspondence: Dr. Sumeet Juneja, E-mail: sumeetjuneja19@gmail.com Copyright: © the author(s), publisher and licensee Medip Academy. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License, which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.18203/2394-6040.ijcmph20211238