Akshay Kumar extends support to frontline workers

After 18 security personnel posted in Malegaon tested positive for COVID-19 on Wednesday, taking the city's toll to 750, Bollywood superstar Akshay Kumar extended his support to the city's frontline workers. After donating 1,000 GoQii smartwatches that track symptoms of the virus to the Mumbai police, the actor gave 500 to the Nashik police in the wake of the steep rise in new cases.

Vishwas Nangre Patil, Nashik police commissioner, informs mid-day, "We are grateful to Mr Kumar for donating 500 smart watches, which will be utilised by our frontline workers who are above 45 years of age. The data of their body temperature, heart rate and blood pressure will be collected on the COVID dashboard, which is centrally monitored by the police force. The health and wellness dashboards, which records BMI and footsteps will also be tracked constantly."

The Maharashtra Police department will be the first in the world to enable remote tracking and managing the health of its security personnels. They partnered with a German health tech startup to conduct a clinical study for the early detection of infections based on data collected by the devices.

The bands will be available in India in phases. Before making it available for the general public, the wrist bands will be given on an immediate basis to frontline workers. Plans are underway to launch the product in the US, UK, Australia, Japan, UAE, Singapore and other countries. Following PM Narendra Modi's call of Be Vocal about Local #AtmaNirbharBharat, the company is evaluating manufacturing options in India.

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