The Bengal government has launched an app — Sandhane — to trace suspected Covid-19 patients so that there can be early detection and containment of the novel coronavirus.

During a meeting with several chambers of commerce at Nabanna on Thursday, chief minister Mamata Banerjee said: “So far, seven to eight small areas of the state have been affected. We have to look after the areas very carefully. We have launched Sandhane, an app, to find out suspected cases across the state.”

Chief secretary Rajiva Sinha explained how the app would be used. “Accredited social health activists (Asha) will visit every household in the state and take note if there is a significant number of fever cases or cases of cough and cold in a particular area. The activists will feed the data into the app. The data will be monitored from Nabanna directly,” Sinha said.

He said if any area recorded a significant number of people with fever or other symptoms of Covid-19, medical teams would be sent immediately. A health department official said that in such cases, the entire area might be shut down and rapid tests could be conducted on every suspected patient.