CEBU, Philippines — The Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) has reminded local government units to stop developing their own contact tracing system and instead use the Stay Safe application that is already available at no cost to them.
“However, the DILG said that if the LGU already has one and it’s being used widely, the LGU can continue with it provided that it integrates it with the Stay Safe application which is required under IATF regulations,” DILG undersecretary and spokesperson Jonathan Malaya said in a statement.
The Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF-EID) has required all national government agencies and local government units to use StaySafe.ph, the government’s official contact tracing app, in a bid to boost the government’s digital contact tracing efforts last year yet. However, some LGUs have opted to use their own systems.
“We will soon fully implement the Stay Safe application and we don’t want to complicate the situation any further. It will be easier and more cost-efficient for LGUs to just use Stay Safe instead of buying their own,” said Malaya.
Once contact tracing data is centralized, Malaya said it will then be linked to the health department’s surveillance and contact tracing platform COVID Kaya or the COVID-19 document repository system.
Malaya said they are now finalizing the terms of the formal turnover of the Stay Safe application from the developer Multisys to the DILG as end-user and head of the NTF Task Group on Contact Tracing.
“Once fully turned over to the DILG, we will conduct a workshop for all LGUs who have existing contact tracing systems so that these can be integrated with Stay Safe,” he added.
A unified system is expected to boost digital contract tracing efforts and complement in the work of 255,000 contact tracers nationwide. — JMD (FREEMAN)