Digital Response Framework for COVID-19 Pandemic Monitoring and Control in India

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic is atypical in scale, perseverance, and geographical progression throughout the world in recent history. It is declared a public calamity in India wherein the Prime Minister’s Oﬃce is directly associated with every aspect of surveillance, control, and relief measures. This paper aims to present the digital response framework for management, surveillance, and control of the COVID-19 crisis across the country. The paper also presents technological adoption by various states and union territories and analysis of COVID cases in India. Methods: The Ministry of Home Aﬀairs and its various organizations such as the National Disaster Management Authority, and Ministry of Health and Family Welfare are managing various authoritative and administrative activities, and Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology through National Informatics Centre (NIC) are providing technological solution to manage the COVID-19 pandemic in India. The NIC is playing a crucial role to develop and manage digital solutions for surveillance and control of COVID-19 in India. Results: On analysis of COVID 19 data of reported conﬁrmed, recovered, and deceased cases across India in various states, it is observed that Maharashtra was most aﬀected followed by Karnataka, Kerala, Delhi and other states. Conclusion: The technological solutions developed, implemented, managed by NIC making up the digital response framework for monitoring, surveillance, and control of COVID-19 are standard for India and proved to be eﬀective in combating the COVID-19 pandemic and are widely used in central, state, and local governing bodies.


Introduction
The current COVID-19 pandemic has detrimentally impacted the entire world. The first known instance of the COVID-19 disease was reported in Hubei territory in China in November 2019 [1]. Subsequently, a cluster of COVID-19 instances were reported on 31st December 2019 in Wuhan, China, and it was notified to the World Health Organization (WHO) China [1,2]. Later, on 30th January 2020, India reported its first COVID-19 case [3] which was only a tip of the iceberg. Quickly, the COVID 19 disease spread almost every region in the world, threatening health systems and governments worldwide. Governments all around the world are adopting various measures to limit the spread of the coronavirus and confine the disease within the specific region to prevent further escalation of the number of cases. Different Measures such as social distancing, partial or complete lockdown and the banning of the large gathering area have been followed and continuing to follow in many countries. The overall goal of these initiatives is to isolate the infected individuals to prevent the spread of this highly contagious disease. The biggest challenge is to track and isolate the infected individuals. However, in this digital era, various digital technologies are helping a lot to fight the pandemic by providing means for tracking, isolations, surveillance, control and preventions. Containment of COVID 19 is the first priority by all the governments around the world to tackle the spread of this highly contagious disease. In India the public health and sanitation comes under state and local governments whose responsibility is to formulate legislation for public health. However, in this unprecedented time of COVID 19 pandemic, the union government whose legal responsibility is to manage quarantine and interstate migration, plays important role to fight and contain the corona virus. In the wake of the rising number of cases and death tools the Indian government has taken several precautionary, informative, technological, medical and financial steps to fight against the deadly virus. On March 24, 2020, a complete 21-day lockdown was announced by the prime minister for the entire nation prohibiting the movement of peoples from their houses and issued a comprehensive guideline to contain the COVID 19 pandemic in the country. The government soon initiated dissemination of authentic information about the virus, its spread, control and preventive measures, various guidelines, helpline numbers, registered COVID 19 cases, and death tool, through the Ministry of Health's official website. Moreover, the government has designed various diagnostic and treatment centers, isolation wards, vaccine development facilities, and financial help and other relief packages for poor and low-income families. The government is widely taking the advantage of digital technologies and deploying new, smart and innovative technological solutions to facilitate various services in response to this global crisis. Government institutions are adopting digital tools to support widespread dissemination of information, track real time disease transmission, create virtual meetings, and provide medical and treatment facilities to patients. Besides COVID 19 related essential function and services, government bodies are also adopting digital tools and technologies to keep the pace of learning, teaching, legal, transport, economic, social, and many other services for public welfare, and are working in coordinative, collaborative, and collective manner to limit the spread and manage the risk of COVID 19, and resume the economic and social activates to its normalcy. However, considering all these things, a digital surveillance and management framework is essential to combat a pandemic, effectively utilize the resources, and priorities various healthcare and management activities. This paper presents a digital response framework for surveillance and control of COVID 19 in India highlighting ways India has adopted and integrated digital technologies for pandemic planning, management, monitoring, surveillance, prevention, and control. The paper presents the adopted and deployed technologies by various government bodies, central ministries, public health departments, state government departments, and district and local bodies for contact tracing, quarantine management, testing, and health care facilities. As a part of the framework, the paper covers the organizational hierarchy combating the pandemic crisis in India in addition to the best technological initiatives by various state and central agencies. We hope it would be worthwhile for governments around the world to fight the highly contagious disease.

Related Works
Rapid dissemination of the highly contagious corona virus disease has necessitated the Government and other stakeholders to take various initiatives to contain its spread. Researchers around the world together with academia and industry are working on various tools and techniques to limit its spread or confine into a specific area. The authors in [4] discussed about the role of IoT, Blockchain, 5G in managing its impact, as it placed government around the world in a precarious position and highlights the impact on the global economy to the direct health implications associated with the outbreak of COVID-19. Moreover, authors in [4] explored the use of technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT), Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), blockchain, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and 5G, among others, to help mitigate the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak. Pham et al. [5] emphasized the importance of AI and Big Data responding to the COVID-19 outbreak and preventing the severe effects of the pandemic. They [5] presents applications of AI and Big data in fighting against COVID-19 and highlight challenges and issues associated with state-of-theart solutions, and finally come up with recommendations for the communications to effectively control the COVID-19 situation. Mondal et al. [6] described different aspects of novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19), presented a visualization of the spread of the infection, and discussed the potential applications of data analytics on this viral infection. They [6] have highlighted several factors including COVID-19 origin, its transmission capacity, its symptoms. Researchers have also discussed about Smart health systems such as E-Quarantine [7] for health services workers who deal with Covid-19 patients as it measures patient's temperature, respiratory rate, pulse rate, blood pressure, and time which helps in monitoring corona virus patients of worst cases and saving mild cases at homes [7]. Zhang et al. [8] described a large-scale agentbased model for epidemic prediction in the context of the metropolitan area of Beijing, where a microscopic public transport system is simulated and integrated with the agent-based model. This public transportation component is microscopic as they [8] modelled all lines and stops for both the metro and the bus system in Beijing. Through this component, agents can realistically 'travel' to their destinations and the component will provide accurate travel routes and durations. Mobile applications technology has been leveraged in a number of ways to control the spread of COVID-19, including to support knowledge translation [9]. Mobile applications are accessible, acceptable, easily adopted, and have the ability to support social distancing efforts. Moreover, for infectious disease pandemic planning and response, Web app such as ISIS [10] is designed to support networked epidemiology -the study of epidemic processes over social contact networks. This system can handle airborne infectious diseases such as influenza, pertussis, and smallpox.
Machine learning and cloud computing are also being used to identify the patterns and predict the trends of COVID 19 spread. Tuli et al. [11] discussed an improved mathematical model to analyze and predict the growth of the epidemic. They have applied an MLbased improved model to predict the potential threat of COVID-19 in countries worldwide. It can be deployed on a cloud computing platform for a more accurate and real-time prediction of the growth behavior of the epidemic. Yuan et al. [12] establish a general framework for predicting the so-called critical "Turning Period" in an infectious disease epidemic such as the COVID-19 outbreak in China. The underlying mathematical model in the framework is the individual Susceptible-Exposed-Infective-Removed (iSEIR) model, which is a set of differential equations. The paper [13] discusses the response of public health to the COVID-19 outbreak in china and for this taken action accordingly which demonstrated the importance of transparency, surveillance, and testing laboratories during an outbreak. Ye et al. [14] developed a technical framework to respond to the COVID-19 epidemic from a health informatics perspective. They [14] collected health-related information to understand the actions taken by the health informatics community in China during the COVID-19 outbreak and developed a health information technology framework for epidemic response based on health information technology-related measures and methods. Wearable smart devices like IoT-Q band [15], and Smart Themormeters [16], drones such as Thermal Imaging Drone [17], Disinfectant Drone [18], and Surveillance Drone [19], automatic and telerobots [20] are developed to limit and confine the spread of disease. Similarly, researchers in [21] developed a graphical smart health system for physicians who can remotely visualize the patient's data. Likewise, smart medical systems for hospitals to monitor patients' health status proposed by many researchers [22,23]. Most of the earlier works on healthcare wearable are based on fitness tracking [24,25]. Governments all around the world are taking necessary steps to curb the spreading of the highly contagious COVID-19 disease using various means of digital, smart, and intelligent technologies [26][27][28]. In the same line Government of India is also taking various initiatives to monitor and control the threat incurred due to the COVID-19 pandemic through effective surveillance.

Digital Response Framework
The COVID 19 pandemic is posing a great challenge to the public healthcare systems, transportations, medical and clinical systems, and emergency response managements of the governments' worldwide. The approaches used by the governments to combat the pandemic and respond to the outbreak largely depend on the availability of resources, medical and healthcare facilities, and collective and collaborative efforts of government bodies. Government bodies including central, state, district, and local bodies in their close coordination are playing their key roles to mitigate the impact of pandemic in different sectors by developing, implementing, and deploying new digital systems, tools, and techniques. In India, Prime Minister's office (PMO) is the nodal authority to provide secretarial assistance to prime ministers to manage and coordinate government and his office. While National Informatics Centre (NIC) is the core organization that provides digital technology solutions, Information and Communication Technology (ICT), and eGovernance support to the governments at various level. Figure 1 presents the layered architecture of the various organizational hierarchy involved in surveillance, control, and management of the pandemic in India. The detailed description of each organization bodies involved to tackle COVID 19 challenges is presented in the following sub sections.

Government Bodies Combating against COVID 19
The government of India is taking all necessary measures to fight against the COVID 19 pandemic and working together in partnership with World Health Organization (WHO) to effectively contain the COVID 19 in India.
World Health Organization: World Health Organization is a United Nations agency responsible for universal healthcare with an objective to ensure universal health coverage, monitor public health emergencies, coordinates responses during health emergencies, provide better health and well-being, and serve the vulnerable. WHO directs and coordinates international health within the UN system to the member countries, and addresses health issues related to communicable and non-communicable diseases. It sets guidelines and health standards internationally and assists Governments in strengthening the health services and works towards eradicating epidemic, endemic, or pandemic (1). WHO and the Government of India consistently have worked together to eradicate Polio and made India Polio free. With the same might, dedication, and sincerity, WHO is supporting India through valuable guidance and contributions to fight against COVID 19 and contain its spread. WHO with its dedicated team tirelessly working across the country with state governments to strengthen the health systems and proactively involved in COVID 19 response measures including epidemiological data collection, capacity building, contact tracing, hospital preparedness, laboratory diagnosis, community engagements, and control and prevention of infections. WHO 19. The PM is regularly reaching out to various State Governors, Chief Ministers, Health Ministers, and other stakeholders such as COVID warriors (e.g. doctors, nurses, health workers, and sanitation staff), Pharma Sectors, and AYUSH Practitioners through telephonically, video conferencing, or virtual meetings to get feedback and suggestions, and encourage their efforts to fight against the menace of highly contagious COVID 19. PMO through various meetings review the preparedness and response on this pandemic crisis and takes important decisions in partnership with state governments to implement rapid testing, isolation, and quarantine facilities at all parts of the country. Moreover, to create awareness and disseminate information's including advisories PMO office guides Ministry of Information and Broadcasting to collaborate and work in cooperation with Ministry of Health, Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD), and NDMA. The PMO office is also taking care of other activities such as providing e-learning facilities to help teachers and students to have access of quality education at the time of lockdown as closing of schools and colleges have caused huge loss to student's precious learning times. Moreover, PMO monitors of all the preparedness and responses, law and order issues, and various relief measures during the COVID 19 crisis.
Digital technologies have become a backbone to conduct all the activities including interaction, virtual meetings, video conferencing, and dissemination of information. PMO has initiated many steps to leverage the benefits of digital resources, mainstream me-dia, and social media to combat the COVID 19 crisis. One of the great initiatives by PMO is a citizen engagement platform MyGoV to crowdsource governance ideas through the active participation of citizens. Launched on July 26, 2014, MyGoV is hosted and managed by NIC and works as an important interface for interaction of government with the citizens. MyGoV has become one of the leading sources of information about COVID 19 providing daily updates about the number of active cases, deaths, testing status, state-wise COVID status, response and management guidelines, and other COVID 19 related information.
Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (Mo-HFW): Ministry of Health and Family Welfare is responsible for formulating health policies and dealing with healthcare including public health awareness, immunization, preventive medicine, and various aspects of health and family welfare. MoHFW and its supporting institutions regularly release clinical and non clinical guidelines for control and preventive measures to combat against COVID 19 and limit its spread. Mo-HFW has an objective to provide universal access to healthcares services in an equitable and affordable way across all sections of the society. MoHFW presents regular daily briefings of the COVID 19 information, GIS mapping of disease hotspots, and access to real-time data about COVID cases and deaths across various states and regions.
National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA): The National Disaster Management Authority is a government organization headed by the Prime Minister of India with a vision to build disaster resilient India through proactive, sustainable and technology driven strategy. NDMA is responsible for planning, policy making, and formulating guidelines for disaster management to safeguard effective response to disasters (1). NDMA approves national plans prepared by departments or ministries of Govt. of India and coordinates the enforcement and implementation of disanster management policies and plans. Moreover, NDMA also considers various measures including prevention, mitigation, and preparedness of disasters, and capacity building to deal with adverse situations during disasters or natural clamities. NDMA approves national plans prepared by departments or ministries of Govt. of India and coordinates the enforcement and implementation of disaster management policies and plans. Moreover, NDMA also considers various measures including prevention, mitigation, and preparedness of disasters, and capacity building to deal with adverse situations during disasters or natural calamities. Because of its scale and complexity, COVID 19 has become a disaster of unusual proportions in India (1). On February 4, 2020, NDMA issued an advisory to States and Union Territories to disseminate guidelines on travelling, maintaining hygiene and avoiding the crowding places, and enhancing quarantine and isolation facilities across the country. To track the geographical distribution of COVID 19 risk and the migrant labours movement, NDMA established a GISenabled dashboard that combine and visualize information from different data sources with a common location reference. The GIS dashboard displays the existing cumulative number of confirmed, recovered, and deaths because of COVID 19 in India and across various states. It also displays GIS maps, pie charts, line graphs, and bar charts of the cumulative number of confirmed cases in various states and across India that helps for planning and management of COVID 19 distribution at state and national level.
Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY): Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology is a Govt. of India agency responsible for promoting e-Governance, inclusive and sustainable growth of electronics and IT-ITES industries, development of human resources through e-learning, enhancing digital services and providing secure cyberspace. It promotes and executes different policies associated with IT and IT-enabled services, and helps various departments to facilitate e-infrastructures. It is a premier agency to build electronics and IT products to counter the COVID 19 pandemic. National Informatics Center (NIC) is one of its organizations responsible for setting up of ICT infrastructure and digital solutions to support government at different levels. MEITY also facilitates to produce products such as low-cost polymer swab for COVID testing kits, antiviral and anti-bacterial masks, plasmonic portable sensor for covid 19 virus antigens, and digital thermometers to help government fight against COVID 19.
Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS): Directorate General of Health Services is an organization associated with MoHFW that provides technical suggestions on all medical and public health affairs to MoHFW. It coordinates with health directorates of states and union territories to implement national health and family welfare programs and supervises the hospitals under central governments and addresses the public health concerns.
State Governments: State governments in India have proactively responded to contain spread of the COVID 19 pandemic through various means such as declaration of emergency, restriction of movement of peoples, closure of institutions and public places, and prevention of mass gatherings. It is the constitutional mandate of state governments, local governments, and municipalities to coordinate during public health emergencies and collectively fight to contain the outbreak of COVID 19. As the "public health and sanitation " comes under state list of Indian constitution, it is the responsibility of individual states to take effective measures to contain the spread of the disease. States are using their own machinery and resources to fight against the deadly COVID 19 pandemic and some states are more successful than the other states due to their disparity in the actions and measures taken to contain the disease. Rajasthan's Bhilwara model to identify, isolate, test, and treatment is a widely acclaimed model to contain the spread of the disease and have been widely accepted in many district of other Rajasthan and other states. The Kerala government's prompt response and quick deployment of resources, active surveillance at various levels, risk communication, and community engagement helped to cotain the disease.
State Disaster Management Authority (SDMA): According to the disaster management act 2005 [1] , all the states and UTs have been provided the right to constitute state disaster management authority (SDMA) with its own advisory committee to formulate state policy, guidelines, and plans in coordination with NDMA for preparedness and mitigation measures to combat any disaster. In addition, the state government is responsible to constitute a state executive committee to coordinate and monitor the implementation of policies, examine vulnerable disaster-prone regions, and evaluate preparedness and response measures in any threatening disasters or such situations. During the current covid 19 pandemics, Indian state governments have responded actively by invoking the disaster management act 2005 along with the declaration of emergencies, restriction of movements, closure of institutions and public places, and many other measures to restrain the spread of the virus. SMDA in various states took important decisions in implementing lockdown measures and ensuring the supply of essential commodities. Moreover, SDMA facilitated various means to collect funds and contribute to state disaster relief funds (SDRF). The funds thus collected have been used to combat the pandemic and help the needy persons.
District Disaster Management Authority (DDMA): The DDMA is a district level body that works under the chairmanship of District Magistrates/Collectors/Deputy Commissioners besides an elected representative of local authority as cochairman. The district authority is liable for planning, management, coordination, and implementation of disaster response and relief measures at district level. [1] http://ndma.gov.in/sites/default/files/PDF/DM act2005.pdf District Health Officers (DHO): At the district level, the District Health Officer (DHO) manages the public health affairs and is assisted by one or two assistant DHOs. The public health authorities in the local area work through a network of healthcare centers consisting of Primary Health Centers, sub-centers, and dispensaries. All these centers are managed and supervised by DHOs, additional DHOs and assistant DHOs.
District Surveillance Officers (DSO): All the disease-related surveillance activities at the peripheral level are managed and coordinated by district surveillance officers. Each district has its district surveillance units (DSUs) that receive surveillance-related data about diseases and transmit them to state/central surveillance units. DSUs coordinate rapid response and training activities, collate and analyze collected data, monitor the trends, and sends regular feedback to the reporting units. Each DSU is headed by a DSO, who assess the disease surveillance status and report them to the District collector, CMO, and Zila Parishad Chairman. Moreover, DSO ensures timely response and action taken, reports are sent to state authorities, training and capacity building, and regular feedback from the district and peripheral units.

Government of India's Health Department
Initiatives with NIC as Technology Partner The Government of India (GoI)'s first step to curb the spread of COVID-19 was the screening of air passengers coming from infected countries and tracing of positive cases along with their travel history. However, the situation started worsening by the end of February 2020. There felt a need for a dedicated system to track and trace positive cases and isolate them to prevent the spread of infection in the large masses. GoI started taking the benefit of technology for detection, prevention, and control of the disease. Many mobile and portals were introduced for better covid-19 surveillance and management. NIC, a technological partner of GoI, having its presence at the national, state, and district-level helped to develop technological solutions.
At the time of this covid-19 crisis, NIC played a pivotal role to combat the pandemic by providing crucial e-Services to the Government and citizens throughout the country. Many tools and digital solutions developed by NIC are functioning as the milestone to deliver the government services to citizens at the time of the covid-19 crisis. NIC has created a digitally-enabled ecosystem to assist government and government-run institutions to discharge essential services throughout the covid-19 triggered lockdown. It provides plenty of services including video conferencing, e-office, web hosting, networking, messaging, and round-the-clock IT supports to central, state, and district administrations. The video conference services provided by NIC during this challenging time has helped to connect government officials without any physical contact or exposure to address important matters. Moreover, NIC has developed systems for monitoring and management of the covid-19 crisis by disseminating information, quarantine guidelines, and advisories. Moreover, online portals developed by NIC such as COVID Warrior Portal [2] plays a crucial role to support the availability of covid-warriors such as healthcare workers, doctors, nurses, and volunteers in critical situations. Besides various systems, NIC has also developed many android-based mobile apps for monitoring, surveillance, contact tracing, maintaining patient records, monitoring ASHA workers' visit to quarantined subjects, for applying medical-aids, ambulance, and pass for volunteers and vehicles' movement. For example, Aarogya Setu app, Covid Care Kerala app, COVID Suraksha app by NIC Hojai, Assam, and many similar apps have been developed for monitoring, tracking, and surveillance purposes.
Apart from monitoring and tracking systems, NIC states units have developed various helpline portals for lodging complaints and resolving issues associated with covid lockdown and healthcare services. For example, NIC UP integrated the 24X7 UP CM Helpline with Jansunwai Samadhan Portal, and NIC Srinagar has developed integrated COVID Call Centre for essential services and grievance redressal. Besides these many systems and applications for registration of migrant workers and stranded peoples, web applications for online education and employment, issuing e-Passes, and financially supporting government and affected citizens. In near future, NIC will be leading to deliver [2] https://covidwarriors.gov.in/ [3] https://covid19jagratha.kerala.nic.in/ smart solutions based on artificial intelligence, neural network, and machine learning techniques.
Digital technologies have been widely adopted and integrated throughout the world for covid-19 management and response. From surveillance, contact tracing, testing, quarantine to essential services, medical supplies, screening, and clinical management, digital technologies have played a crucial role [29]. The government of India has taken many technological initiatives to combat the pandemic. Important technological initiatives are discussed in the following subsections.

COVID19 India Portal:
Covid19 India portal is a we portal developed by Centre for Health Informatics, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW), Government of India for maintaining records and situational updates of COVID 19 cases and deaths throughout the country. Besides number of deaths, it maintains the records of number of confirmed, active, and discharged/cured/migrated cases. The portal contains a dashboard depicting district-wise analysis of the confirmed, active, recovered, and deaths. The dashboard gives a comprehensive view of health preparedness, testing, and case monitoring for effective decision making at this global crisis. The dashboard also facilitate the reporting of surveillance, quarantine, ambulance availability, and other logistic supports. The portal is also presents the positive case management and hotspot analysis. Moreover, the portal is integrated with the Aarogy setu app to forecast and reports the emerging hotspots and Bluetooth and self assessment reports. Figure 2 presents the work-flow and various field entry updates of the Covid India Portal. The figure presents that the data updated to Covid India portal be free from redundancies and multiple entries and ensures correct entries per confirmed covid 19 cases.

Aarogya Setu App:
The Aarogya Setu app [4] is a real-time patient tracking application developed by the NIC, under the Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology, Government of India. The app runs on both Android and iOS platforms and available in 11 different languages. It is an important tool for managing the ongoing pandemic through contact tracking of individuals who may have come or likely to come in contact with an infected person. The app informs its users through notification whenever they come across COVID-19 positive patients within the specified range of distance (e.g., 500 meters to 10 kilometers). It uses Bluetooth and GPS technology to track users' movement and discover nearby infected individuals with a smartphone [4] https://www.mygov.in/aarogya-setu-app/ having the app installed. The app also facilitates selfassessment tests through a questionnaire to indicate the risk level and current health status of users. Based on the risk level the app recommends self-quarantine at home or to approach public health authorities. The app is people-centric and depends on input from the user's self-reporting of their health status, thus the effectiveness and accuracy of health assessment are compromised. However, due to its multitude of benefits, such as self-assessment, social distancing tips, and selfquarantine guidelines, the app has received countrywide acceptance.

ICMR Portal:
To manage sample collection for Rapid Antigen Test (RAT) at authorized sample collection centers with the help of authorized persons the government has developed a dedicated ICMR portal [5] for COVID 19 sample collection and management. Only the authorized government officials can use the portal through mobile phones for transferring RAT and RT-PCR data to the ICMR portal for probable positive or negative cases. The registered users can view lab sample collection centers/labs in their respective states or districts. More specifically, the portal is meant to monitoring of actual data by the GOI and ICMR about the details of people who underwent RAT and RT-PCR tests. The portal is integrated with RATI [6] and RT-PCR [7] app for data collections. Figure 3 presents the data-flow between Aarogyasetu app and ICMR portal.

Integrated Disease Surveillance Program:
The Integrated Disease Surveillance Programme [8] (IDSP) is a flagship program of the Government of India under the National Health Mission for all states and union teritories to strengthen the surveillance of epidemic-prone diseases at the early phase of transmission. It involves the integration and decentralization of surveillance activities such as monitoring disease trends, detecting any prevailing outbreaks, and responding to the identified outbreak at the earliest phase of transmission. Under the IDSP, weekly disease case counts as suspected, presumptive, and the confirmed cases are collected from the district, states, and central surveillance units to identify the disease trends and seasonality. Once the rising trends or outbreaks are identified in any specific region, the trained rapid response teams (RRTs) are assigned to diagnose and control the outbreak. It is an IT-enabled project [5] https://covid19cc.nic.in [6] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/rati/id1508539268 [7] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/rtpcr/id1509701314 [8] https://idsp.nic.in/ with various data centers and equipment managed by NIC for transmission of data from the district levels to the central surveillance units. IDSP takes various control and preventive measures such as interactive electronic discussion, training, e-learning, reviewing, and monitoring various activities.

COVID-19 Vaccine Intelligence Network (CoWIN):
To make covid vaccine available to all the citizens the central government has initiated COVID-19 Vaccine Intelligence Network (CoWIN) system, which is a digitalized platform to roll out and scale up nationwide distribution of COVID vaccine. CoWIN is a cloud-based IT solution and an extension of the ongoing electronic Vaccine Intelligence Network (eVIN) for planning, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation of COVID-19 vaccination across the country. The CoWIN system will help to track the beneficiaries of vaccination and monitor the utilization, wastage, and coverage of the vaccination at the National, State, District, and Sub-District level. The system has a CoWIN web site [9] for creation of users (admins, supervisor, and vaccinator) at state and district levels, maintenance of vaccinator databases, session sites, and beneficiaries. The system also has a dedicated CoWIN mobile app [10] for registration of individual beneficiaries and their authentication and recording of vaccination. The vaccination will be initiated in a phased manner on a priority basis starting from the health care workers, frontline workers, and population at higher risk. Figure 4 presents the integration of eVIN to CoWIN network. The eVIN contains an easy to use mobile app for recoding vaccine data and health worker updates, whereas the CoWIN beneficiary management platform tracks beneficiaries and manages vaccination session. All this information is fed into the cloud-based centralized server from which important information all visualized in near real-time the information is through a dashboard of CoWIN web interface. The CoWIN web interface visualizes the alert on low stock, expiry, and optimal recommendation of vaccines. It also visualizes the beneficiary vaccination status and other monitoring and coverage information.

RT-PCR App:
The union health ministry has launched a dedicated real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) mobile-based application for medical staff to fill the sample collection data at the sample collection centers. It is an important initiative to report sample collection for various type of specimen to authorities at ICMR, state governments, etc. in near real-time and minimize [9] https://www.cowin.gov.in/ [10] http://www.app.cowin.gov.in/ the sample collection error. Using only one entry point the information can be shared everywhere with the respective government authorities with minimum error in the real-time reporting of data. The application is connected to the main database used by the health ministry and keeps updating automatically. To keep track of the place of sample collection for RT-PCT test the app uses location parameters (latitude, and longitude).

COVID Facility App:
Covid facility app uses the individual health status and hotspots information from Aarogya Setu for optimized treatment, patient referral, and monitoring immediate utilization of infrastructure and essential supplies to scale up health system preparedness and enable datadriven decision making. Figure 5 represents the entire data flow and management during covid 19 pandemics through various portals and apps from the patients to the central reporting agency ICMR that monitors and coordinates different government offices and health agencies. It can be observed from the figure that the samples and data from the patients are fed and update at the collection point by medical staff through the RT-PCR app. Thereafter, these data throughout the country are collected at the single sources in the ICMR database for testing to prevent any redundancy and multiple entries. This single source of data is now used for surveillance of the disease incidences and reporting of positive cases through the centralized dashboard to various state and district surveillance officers. Table 1 presents the state-wise technological solutions, apps, and essential supports provided by various state and district level NIC centers to combat the COVID-19 crisis. The technological solutions and supports are provided in almost all sectors of government organizations that include health, labour, education, food, transport, finance, justice, secretariats, and various ministries. NIC's video conferencing services have been used widely across ministries, secretariats, cabinets, and other government organizations to conduct meetings for planning, management, preparedness, and monitoring of essential services during this global crisis. NIC's various technological services helped to connect government officials, covid warriors, and other staff without coming into direct physical contact and ensuring the least possible physical contact and exposure to the infection. The table lists solutions/services developed and implemented in various states and union territories and their detailed descriptions. It can be observed from the table that states and union territories have adopted different online and offline technological solutions such as dedicated portals, tools, dashboards, and mobile applications to combat the pandemic crisis.
Dedicated apps are being developed by various state and district NIC units for sample collection centers for conducting RT-PCR, antigen, and antibody tests and updating the number of covid positive cases. The developed COVID portals have the facility to login for district collectors, medical staff, health officers (i.e. CMO, DMHO), and district surveillance officers (DSOs). The dedicated COVID India portal facilitates the verification and updating of real-time positive cases data and entry and updates of COVID care centers. Many other technological solutions that include systems for patients, home isolation, logistic infrastructure, quarantine management, corona test monitoring, containment zones, contact tracking, and death tracking have been developed by various states.

Analysis of COVID 19 in India
India is a country with a large geographic area (3,287,240 square kilometres) and population (1.3 million). It has high regional, climatic, cultural, and population diversity. Due to these diversities, the infection rate, its progression over time, and the preventive measures taken by various states, territories, and the public are different. Moreover, the limited availability of resources has resulted in the high spread of new infection in some parts of the country. To analyse the confirmed, recovered and deceased COVID 19 cases, we consider the data from COVID 19 India website [11] . Figure 6 presents the daily number of COVID 19 cases across India. It presents the daily confirmed, recovered, and deceased cases from the first confirmed case on January 30, 2021 to February 15, 2021. We can observe from the figure that initially the number of daily confirmed and recovered cases increases rapidly till the mid of September 2020. Thereafter, we observe that the number of daily confirmed and recovered cases continually decreases. Both the daily confirmed and daily recovered cases show similar trends. Moreover, from the figure 6, we notice that the number of recovered cases lags behind the number of daily confirmed cases till the mid of September 17, 2020. Thereafter, the number of daily recovered cases leads to the number of daily confirmed cases and continues to be leading. Thus, we see a high recovery from the infection after mid-September 2020. We observe a fall in the number of confirmed cases and increase in recovery, which may be due to an increase in medical facilities, healthcare resources, and preventive measures by states and union territories. Figure 6 also presents the daily deceased cases due to COVID 19. The daily number of deceased is very small compared to the number [11] https://www.covid19india.org/ of confirmed case as can be seen from the line graph. More than 500 daily number of deceased were reported in the mid of July to the end October 2020. By the mid of February 2021, we observe a great decrease in the number of daily confirmed and deceased cases. This is because of the central government and various state's proactive measures to control the spread and provide essential healthcare and medical facilities. Figure 7 presents bar graph of state-wise total number of confirmed, recovered and deaths till Feb 15, 2021. From figure 7, we observe that most covid 19 confirmed cases and deaths have been reported by Maharastra. The other most affected states include Karnataka, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, and West Bengal. To analyze statewise daily confirmed, recovered, and deceased cases of the most affected states, we populated the line graphs of the top five states. Figure 9, 10, 11, 12, and 13 present the daily confirmed, recovered, and deceased cases of most affected states. These figures show the disease dynamics in Maharastra, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, and Delhi. In most of the states infection started from the patients having travel history to any COVID-19 infected countries. Maharastra is the most severely affected state with more than 2 million total number of confirmed cases till the mid of February 2020. From figure 9, we can observe that there is an increasing trend of the daily confirmed number of infected cases from mid of March to mid of September 2021. Thereafter, the daily confirmed number of infected cases shows a decreasing trend and the daily recovery leads to the confirmed cases. Higher recovery and decrease in the number of confirmed cases may be due to the state's proactive measures to counter the spread of the infection. Among all the states, Maharastra has reported most deaths with more than 51 thousand deceased cases till the mid of February 2021. However, we can observe from figure 9 that the number of deceased is very low compared to the number of daily confirmed cases. Many factors including different control and preventive measures by states, awareness and precautionary measures, and a person's immunity could be responsible for low deaths. Kerala observed strict lockdown and was substantially able to control the spread of infection and reported nearly four thousand deaths in the mid of February 2021. We can observe from Figure 12 the trends of the disease dynamics of Kerala in terms of daily confirmed, recovered, and deceased cases. Similarly, we draw meaningful insights about the disease dynamics from the increasing and decreasing trends of confirmed, recovered, and deceased cases for Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, and Delhi. The infection rate in the year 2021 has decreased because of various precautionary measures by state health departments and the vaccination drive throughout the country. There is still a danger of the second wave of COVID-19 in many states including Maharastra because of irregularities in adopting the COVID-19 precautionary guidelines and unlocking of public places. Moreover, many people across the country are hesitating to get vaccinated because of some doubts, preconception, and fear of some adverse effects of the vaccine. Further, the vaccination drive in India is still not available for general public. The vaccination rollout only meant for specific category of beneficiaries will leave chances of the spread of virus and may increase the infection.

Conclusion
Governments throughout the world are considering different measures and initiatives to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic crisis and attempting to restrict the loss of human lives and economies. The government of India is levering digital solutions with the help of the technological expertise of NIC in giving cutting-edge solutions to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper presents a digital response framework for surveillance and control of COVID-19 in India and various other technological initiatives to fight against this global crisis. It discusses the roles, essential supports, and technical solutions under various governing bodies at different levels of governance. Moreover, the paper also presents the analysis of COVID-19 cases in various parts of India. With the help of NIC as a technology partner, the Government of India has developed and implemented many apps, digital interfaces, and dashboards to combat this pandemic and limit its spread.    An online exam for students of classes 6th to 10th in Tiruvannamalai District was organized using NIC Software. More than 30,000 students registered and around 20,000 students took the test from their homes. Two rounds of Tests have been planned and this is mainly to motivate the students during these tough times. Curfew ePass Curfew ePass developed by NIC Assam on ServicePlus platform has facilitated regulated movement of authorized vehicles and persons at different levels during the lockdown. The initial ePass Application was for vehicles plying for essential services, this was followed by passes for inter-district movement of citizens both by private vehicles and state transport corporation buses, and finally the software was updated to include passes for vehicles of vendors selling fruits and vegetables. Applicants apply online for the passes uploading required documents, district administrations concerned approve online and the e-passes are delivered to the cell phones of the applicants. Nearly 1,60,000 e-passes have been through the system, out of which 70,000 ePasses have been generated.

Inter-State E-Pass
This was launched for people from other states to reach Assam. Already 80,000 applications received in the system.  Data ow between Aarogyasetu app and ICMR portal Flow of data during the COVID-19 management Figure 6 Daily number of COVID 19 con rmed, recovered, and deceased cases in India Statewise total number of con rmed, recovered, and deaths Weekly RTPCR tests conducted by various States Figure 9 Daily number of COVID 19 con rmed, recovered, and deceased cases in Maharastra Figure 10 Daily number of COVID 19 con rmed, recovered, and deceased cases in Andhra Pradesh Figure 11 Daily number of COVID 19 con rmed, recovered, and deceased cases in Karnataka Figure 12 Daily number of COVID 19 con rmed, recovered, and deceased cases in Kerala Figure 13 Daily number of COVID 19 con rmed, recovered, and deceased cases in Delhi