Chennai, March 21: Engineering students of Sona College of Technology, Salem and engineers from Vee Technologies, Bengaluru on Saturday announced they have created two apps to help the country tackle the growing new coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

One app called 'Corona-Scan' proactively allows public health officials to map individuals who were in close proximity with a possibly infected or active coronavirus patient.

The second is a corresponding user app, 'Corona-Support,' that asks the public for their voluntary registration. Coronavirus Test: Who Have to Get Tested For COVID-19? ICMR Revises Testing Strategy.

If an individual tests positive a voluntary status update can be entered in the app, helping health authorities and experts tracking the spread of the virus get accurate information.

"The third-year engineering students of Sona College of Technology -- Bernotsha, Aravind Kumar and Naveen Kumar -- under guidance of professor Akilandeswari J and engineering team of Vee Technologies have built robust app pair 'Corona-Scan' and 'Carona-Support' in a matter of days. This will go a long way to contain spread of Covid-19," Chocko Valliappa, CEO, Vee Technologies, said in a statement.

By tracking and recording people within 3 to 5 metres every two minutes, the 'Carona-Scan' app generates live data of people in close proximity to one another.

By mapping people who may have been infected and risk infecting others, public health officials can identify and take appropriate action to connect with them over the phone and keep them under observation, isolation or recommend testing.

The 'Carona-Scan' app identifies how many times an individual has been in close proximity to the infected person in the designated period.

While the 'Corona-Scan' app will be available to the public health officials, the 'Carona-Support' app can soon be downloaded from Google Play Store.

The apps, to be entered in the COVID-19 innovative app competition announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, can run on any smartphone.

"The success of the two apps lies in rapidly growing the number of users voluntarily. More the number of users the better the chances of breaking the chain of community spread," said Valliappa.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Mar 21, 2020 03:27 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).