Kominfo Makes An Application For Monitoring The Distribution Of Positive COVID-19 Patients

JAKARTA - The Minister of Communication and Information (Menkominfo) Johnny G Plate issued Decree Number 159 of 2020 concerning Efforts to Handling COVID-19 through the support of the Post and Information Technology sector. This effort is made through the TraceTogether application which is expected to be able to tackle the spread of the COVID-19 outbreak in Indonesia.

The government is also partnering with telecommunications operators to track the spread of the virus through an application. Menkominfo Johnny also stated that his party has collaborated with the Ministry of Health (Kemenkes), State-Owned Enterprises (BUMN), and cellular operators who are also coordinating in surveillance efforts in the form of tracing, tracking, and fencing (contain) COVID. -19.

"The implementation of tracing, tracking and fencing through telecommunications infrastructure, systems and applications is to support health surveillance," said Johnny during an online press conference, last Thursday.

Later the TraceTogether application will be installed on the cellphone of a positive Covid-19 patient which will then record the patient's movements for the last 14 days. This application can also detect active cellphone numbers around users who are suspected of being positive COVID-19 patients.

So that the TraceTogether application will provide a warning to patients and those around them when they cross the isolation limit. You do this by sending a warning notification via SMS Blast to its users.

"The application can also be connected with other cellular operators to produce the same visualization. Based on the results of tracking and tracing, the numbers around positive COVID-19 detected will be given a warning to immediately run the ODP protocol," Johnny continued.

Furthermore, this application will also be connected to the COVID-19 Task Force, Kominfo, and the Ministry of Health, because all patient data that is positive for COVID-19 and under surveillance is at the Ministry of Health. For information, patients positive for COVID-19 will be asked to voluntarily submit their telephone number so that they can then be linked to the TraceTogether application.

"Based on the telephone number, the Ministry of Health will conduct tracing, research and direct interaction with patients," said Johnny.

It is known that the TraceTogether application is also owned by the state of Singapore by utilizing the Bluetooth signal exchange to detect other users who are within 2 meters. This Singapore version of the monitoring application has a feature to record users' personal data which can be used by the government at any time if the owner agrees.