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THE Singaporean government targets the COVID-19 virus tracking device that they are developing to be shared and used by citizens in the second half of June 2020.
In a press conference Monday (8/6), Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan also guaranteed that the privacy of each user would be safe. The government underlines that this device will not be equipped with GPS and other electronic data recorders.
“I want to emphasize: there is no electronic scanner, there is no geolocation detector in the device. All are purely focused on using Bluetooth technology as data management, and will only be used to track physical contact,” Balakrishnan said as reported by Bloomberg.
This government announcement was in response to a petition posted by Singaporeans in recent days. Since Saturday (6/6), a petition to urge the launch of this tool has circulated on the change.org page and more than 35,000 people have signed it.
The policy of developing a tracking device was echoed by the government after they annulled the initial plan to develop a mobile app. The effectiveness of gadgets application is considered by the government to be very low because it only has the potential to reach 1.8 million residents. In fact, if the total population of the whole Lion Country numbered more than 5.7 million people.
“Anyway, we will continue to develop to ensure that 100 percent of these devices will not be used by third parties to suck up the user’s data,” Balakrishnan said.
Referring to Johns Hopkins University data, as of Monday (6/8) today the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Singapore has touched 37,910. Of these, the number of victims who recovered reached 24,886, while the death toll was 25 people. [bisnis.com/photo special]
