A mobile app to help the health authorities carry out swift contact tracing among those potentially exposed to COVID-19 is still in the works, months after it was announced.
The authorities’ plan to launch the app was first announced during the height of the outbreak in April. At the time, the Superintendent of Public Health, Charmaine Gauci had said Malta was “evaluating its options”.
A Health Ministry spokesperson has now confirmed the app is being developed together with the Malta Digital Innovation Authority but gave no clear indication when this would be rolled out.
The app in the works “strikes a balance between alertness and GDPR restrictions”, the spokesperson said.
“We are following closely the technologies being developed in other EU member states, which are also a works in progress, to learn and improve on their systems,” the spokesperson said.
The authorities have already insisted that, once rolled out, the app would be voluntary and that it would not impinge on people’s privacy.
A technical report by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) published in June outlined a series of recommendations for the health authorities and developers working on such applications.
While acknowledging the apps’ effectiveness in assisting the health authorities with contact tracing, the ECDC also recommended that “conventional contact tracing should continue”.
In Malta, the use of such apps again became the subject of debate after a cluster of cases emerged from a weekend-long hotel party as well as other mass events, including outdoor feasts celebrations.
Fresh restrictions to control the size of the crowds at such events have since been re-introduced as the number of patients testing positive for coronavirus continued to increase over the past few days.
Sources, meanwhile, have told Times of Malta that contact tracing among those who were at the large gatherings has, at times, proved to be a challenge as some of them had visited other places before testing positive and going into quarantine.
Despite this, the spokesperson said the contact tracing methods “currently employed by the health authorities have been very effective and will remain so”.
Pressed to say when the app might see the light of day and why it was taking months to develop, the spokesperson explained that data protection issues were slowing down the process and it was also ‘tricky’ to get things right.
Some other countries, she said, had rolled out such apps only to have to put them offline since they were in breach of GDPR rules.