New Delhi, April 27, 2020: Microsoft has announced new features on the Bing COVID-19 Tracker to help citizens of India stay up to date with the latest on the pandemic. These include the integration of the Apollo Hospitals bot for self-assessment and a hub for telemedicine support from reputed healthcare organizations. The Tracker will also offer content in nine Indian languages to provide people across the country access to critical information related to the pandemicin preferred language.

The Bing COVID-19 Tracker serves as asingle, credible hub of news and official government information. It allows users to track novel coronavirus (COVID-19) infections across the globe and in India(www.bing.com/covid/local/india) at a hyperlocal level.Users can getstatistics on infection, recoveries and fatalities in their own states and districts. They can also save locations of their near and dear ones to quickly view stats of those areas at one place.

The Tracker provides authentic information on helpline numbers and testing centers as well as guidance and advisories from credible sources, including those from the Government of India, ICMR and WHO.  Moreover, users can stay on top of the latest news - both national and local withembeddedstories and live feeds from leading national and regional language media houses.

Today’s updates:

·         The AI-powered Apollo Hospitals bot enables users to conduct a self-assessment of potential symptoms and risk level for COVID-19. Built on Azure, it has been developed on the basis of guidelines from the WHO and the MoHFW, Government of India. It is available in 4 Indian languages.

·         The Telemedicine support huboffersoptions for online consultation with leading healthcare service providers in India like Apollo Hospitals, Practo, 1mg, and Mfine, among others.Credibletelemedicine providers can join the hub by applying online here and undergoing an assessment process.

·         The tracker now supports Hindi, Bengali, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu, Gujarati, Marathi, Malayalam, and Kannada. An icon on the top of the page offers a simple drop-down menu that allows users to access the content in their native languages.

The above features are also available on Bing.com