LETTER | Starting March 17, the government has reversed the RM10,000 compound to an RM1,500 fine for violating the Covid-19 standard operating procedures (SOPs), including MySejahtera scanning (or checking in manually using the logbook) at a premise.

Along with “wearing a face mask” and “practising physical distancing”, such “contact tracing” using MySejahtera or a logbook was recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO) as an important means to combat the Covid-19 pandemic around the world.

Data recorded on the MySejahtera platform are of great use for the Ministry of Health to swiftly identify individuals who have come in contact with a Covid-19 patient in the last two weeks. This would help the government to interrupt transmission chains of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and plan for early interventions. In the initial stages of the pandemic last year, such contact tracing performed by Ministry of Health (MOH) staff through phone calling and home visits had been effective.

Since the third wave of pandemic broke out around the end of 2020, we have observed a serious problem among the MOH departments: lack of manpower in performing “contact tracing”.

Take, for example, my niece’s case: her kindergarten school teacher was confirmed to have contracted Covid-19 in early January 2021. Yet, none of the parents received any phone call from MOH. It was only later that the principal called up all the affected families.

Such “no one called me” phenomenon happened to almost all the close contacts, probably starting from the end of November 2020, when the daily cases increased to more than 2,000 till now, with the number of infections having decreased. Upon checking with friends at MOH, the answer obtained was, “We can’t afford to do contact tracing due to ‘Tak cukup kakitangan’”.

We can fairly understand the dilemma faced by MOH. Imagine that if there is an average of 50 “close contacts” per patient. Simple math will tell us that MOH requires approximately 1,000 staff working full time daily, just to make calls to 100,000 close contacts, considering an outbreak of 2,000 cases per day.

Here comes the question: if the MOH is no longer using MySejahtera or logbook to aid in curbing the transmission chains of the virus, why is the government still imposing the “contact tracing” SOP with the heavy penalty?

According to MOH, as of Feb 25, 2021, the MySejahtera application has about 21 million active users, and that the app receives about 20 million daily check-ins, which translates into 83,333 hours wasted in a day across the whole of Malaysia, assuming each individual spends an average of 15 seconds per scan and 10 scans per day. In one month, the whole nation would have wasted at least 230 working days due to this ridiculous MySejahtera/logbook SOP.

Since the “contact tracing” is no longer effective, why doesn’t the government just enforce the more effective measures, including the current “mask-wearing” and “social distancing”?

Don’t get me wrong, I believe that the MySejahtera app is a good control measure to combat the pandemic. Among my humble suggestions to the MOH are to include:

(1) Fully utilise the MySejahtera data

Besides tracing close contacts, other information such as the identities and locations of the premises with a high number of cases in a particular area would be of good use in early monitoring of a local outbreak;

(2) Hire jobless individuals

They can be employed as contract staff to perform contact tracing and miscellaneous work; and

(3) Improve the MySejahtera app

Functions such as visualisation of chains of transmission, automated tracing and notification to people who are in close contact, follow-up with patients having mild symptom or asymptomatic, provide support if the patient needs quarantine, etc, are critical to facilitate outbreak investigations.

The Go.data software developed by the Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network, which has been widely used by more than 35 countries in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, is one good example of such application.

Contact tracing is one of the best control measures during this pandemic time. Don’t do it for the sake of doing it.

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.