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SINGAPORE – More than 4.2 million people, or about 78 percent of residents here, are using the TraceTogether token or app, Education Minister Lawrence Wong said on Monday (Jan.4).
Of these people, around two million use the app on their phone alone. But there has been high demand for the tokens, and community centers that had run out of them are set to resume distribution soon, he added.
Mr Wong, who co-chairs the multi-ministerial working group on Covid-19, was responding to MPs’ questions about the TraceTogether program in his ministerial statement in Parliament.
Token distribution began in September at 38 community centers, but demand skyrocketed after the government announced that TraceTogether would be required to enter places like restaurants and shopping malls, with some places running out of stock minutes after the start began. harvest.
Wong said the government initially did not expect such strong demand for the tokens given that people can download the app.
He also said that there were some delays in the manufacturing schedule and as such the token distribution could not be completed at all community centers.
Announcing that distribution will resume soon, he reiterated that after everyone who needs a token has one, people will need to use TraceTogether at all SafeEntry checkpoints, either through the token or the app.
“We will give more information about this once the details and deadlines are finalized, and we will notify all the affected establishments well in advance, so that they prepare and prepare,” he said.
He added that the tokens will be distributed to school students who have not yet collected them.
He said the TraceTogether and SafeEntry program will continue to be a key part of Singapore’s contact tracing operations even as the country moves to phase three.
Before TraceTogether was introduced, it took two days for contact trackers to interview an infected person and establish all of their close contacts before they could contact these contacts and quarantine them.
Mr. Wong said this is now done in a matter of hours, as contact trackers can rely on TraceTogether data to identify close contacts of Covid-19 patients.
He added that the government has spent about $ 10 million to date developing the TraceTogether app and the SafeEntry system.
Mr. Gerald Giam (Aljunied GRC) had asked if the cost is justified and Mr. Wong said: “The results speak for themselves: TraceTogether has stopped the transmission of the virus in many cases and has helped save many lives. Thus that I have no doubt about the profitability of this program. “
He added that the government remains aware of the need to ensure profitability.
One of the ways it has kept costs low is by designing tokens using standard components whenever possible to minimize manufacturing complexity, time, and costs, but this has also meant that TraceTogether tokens are not rechargeable.
During the Parliament session on Monday, Christopher De Souza (Netherlands-Bukit Timah GRC) also asked if the data collected under the TraceTogether program will be used for criminal investigations.
To this, the Minister of State for Internal Affairs, Desmond Tan, said that while TraceTogether was conceived and implemented for contact tracing to combat Covid-19, the measures implemented to protect the data do not preclude its use for criminal investigations with the end of the security and protection of citizens.
It added that for the purposes of criminal investigations, the data collected by TraceTogether is treated like any other data, and the Singapore Police are empowered under the Code of Criminal Procedure to obtain it for their investigations.
However, he said the government, as custodian of TraceTogether’s data, has put in place strict measures to safeguard the data, such as allowing only authorized officials to access the data, using it only for authorized purposes, and storing it in a secure location. servers.
Under the Public Sector (Governance) Act, public officials who recklessly or knowingly disclose data without authorization or misuse the data may also be subject to a fine of up to $ 5,000 or a prison sentence of up to two years, or both, he added.
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