New Delhi: As the novel coronavirus continues to spread across India, the Centre is reportedly working on a mobile app in a bid to alert citizens about COVID-19-affected places.
According to a report, the CoWin-20 app is currently in its trial phase. The objective is to ensure that citizens do not travel to the affected places along with tracking their surrounding.
According to the News18 report, the app will help the users to track all the recent contacts they have made who are later diagnosed with the disease.
It is still unclear when and how the government is planning to launch the coronavirus tracker app. Currently, another coronavirus tracking app by the government of India is available for Android users in Google Play Store.
The app is being developed by the NITI Aayog and will eventually be downloadable from the Google Play Store and Apple App Store, the report said.
The CoWin-20 app is already being rolled out among a select group of users through an APK, it added.
India at the moment is under nationwide lockdown due to the novel coronavirus pandemic. The country until Thursday witnessed 13 deaths due to the pandemic.
Toll collection suspended
The government on Wednesday temporarily suspended toll collection on national highways to ease emergency services in view of the coronavirus outbreak.
"In view of COVID-19, it has been ordered to temporarily suspend the collection of toll at all toll plazas across India," Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari announced.
This will not only reduce inconvenience to emergency services but also save critical time, he said.
The minister said maintenance of roads and availability of emergency resources at toll plazas will continue as usual.
NBT offers free download of books
With people across the country confined to their homes due to the 21-day lockdown to contain the spread of coronavirus, the National Book Trust (NBT) is providing its select and best-selling titles for free download to encourage reading during the period.
As part of the #StayHomeIndiaWithBooks initiative, over 100 books are available for download from the NBT website, an autonomous body under the HRD Ministry.
"Available in Hindi, English, Asamiya, Bangla, Guajarati, Malayalam, Odia, Marathi, Kokborok, Mizo, Bodo, Nepali, Tamil, Punjabi, Telugu, Kannada, Urdu and Sanskrit, the books cover all genres of fiction, biography, popular science, teacher's handbook, and majorly books for children and young adults," a senior HRD Ministry official said.
In addition, there are books by Tagore, by Premchand, and books on Mahatma Gandhi -- all in all there are books for everyone in the family to read and enjoy. More titles will be added to the list," the official added.
The select titles available for download also include - Holidays Have Come, Animals You can't Forget, Nine Little Birds, The Puzzle, Gandhi Tatva Satkam, Women Scientists in India, Activity-Based Learning Science, A Touch of Glass, Gandhi: Warrior of Non-Violence, and many more.
"The PDFs are for reading only and any unauthorised or commercial use is not allowed," the official added.