As of 15 February, MySejahtera’s MySJ Trace feature has tracked down 124,643 contacts of positive cases since its launch in late December. The figure was revealed by Health Minister Khairy Jamaluddin, who also said that the close and casual contacts came from 11,212 positive cases who uploaded their interactions on the app through the feature.
If you’re not familiar, MySJ trace uses Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) to exchange data with other nearby users who also have the feature turned on. The data collected includes Unique User ID (UUID), app version and platform, timestamp of the encounter between users, and a Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI) measurement.
Khairy said that so far, 5,971,117 users have opted into MySJ Trace. The current number of people on MySejahtera is unknown but as of December 2020, the app had a total of 24.5 million users on all platforms. Based on this figure, only about a quarter of the app’s users have activated the Bluetooth tracing feature.
Malaysia is about to enter the endemic transition phase next month, meaning that contact tracing will be more important than ever as SOPs are loosened despite the country facing five-figure daily cases. The Health Minister is encouraging citizens to self-test using RTK kits so they can take immediate action if found to be positive.
(Source: Parlimen, 8 March 2022)
