The Samoa Tourism Authority (STA) and the Ministry of Health led a determined appeal at the start of the week on Monday for everyone to download the Samoa Travel Tracer mobile application.
The public plea is to raise national protection against the COVID-19 pandemic by making it possible to efficiently trace the virus threat in the community using the app.
The tracer app, has been in place since last year but the response has been disappointingly low.
The main blame is public fears of privacy invasion.
Recent numbers provided by the Ministry of Health have shown 4,307 people in Samoa have downloaded the App, which only accounts for approximately 4% of smartphone users in the country.
Samoa Tourism Authority CEO, Fa’amatuainu Lenata’i Sala Suifua says despite extensive media campaigns to promote the tracer app, the numbers are alarmingly low.
“Since we launched the Samoa Travel Tracer App in September last year, we have been running continuous promotional campaigns across all media channels with incentives to encourage our people to download the public health and safety tool” said Fa’amatuainu.
“However with the number of users at only 4%, there is the danger that when the virus gets out into the community, contact tracing efforts will be severely stretched and that puts all of us at risk, especially considering there are over 30 confirmed Covid-19 cases in isolation.”
Deputy Director-General of MOH, Tagaloa Dr Robert Thomson is adamant that in order to contain the virus as quickly as possible, health officials need to use the data from the app. to ascertain close contacts of a confirmed Covid case and immediately inform them by calling the number.
The tracer app. appeal is a joint effort with leading electronic communication companies in the private sector, Vodafone, Digicel and Skyeye.
The President of the Samoa Information Technology Association (SITA) and Skyeye CEO Fa’aso’otauloa Sam Saili who developed the App, firmly assured the public of their personal privacy.
“The Samoa Travel Tracer does not record people’s location or personal information,” said Fa’aso’otauloa.
“Before developing this particular tracer application, we looked at all the different options currently in use by other countries and our research showed people are reluctant to install a tracer app if it traces their location, monitors their movements or stores information about their identity.”
“We understand our people’s concerns with respect to their privacy which is why we decided to go with the BlueTrace protocol because it doesn’t track your location or store personal information such as name, gender or age.
“The other benefit of BlueTrace is that it doesn’t require our people to scan a QR code everywhere they go because not all mobile phones in Samoa have the capability and international analysis of this highlighted inconvenience as a factor among users.”
Digicel Chairman, Pepe Christian Fruean added more reassurances to the users personal privacy anxieties.
“My message here is that 4% Travel Tracer App users is too low” said Pepe.
“Our vaccination rates are nearly 90% – at a minimum, the numbers should significantly be higher,” he pointed out to underline the appeal for the public to download the app.
Deputy Director-General Tagaloa Dr. Thomson attempted to overcome public fears by assuring that MOH will only upload personal information and go over the data on permission from the person.
“Once you download the app, you must leave your Bluetooth settings on at all times for the app to scan continuously.
“It would also help us if people didn’t change their numbers so often which is a common practice here in Samoa, please try and stick to one number especially during these times.”
Samoa has been fortunate so far to remain free of any community transmission of the pandemic virus.
Overall 33 cases of positive carriers have been recorded already. All are still under quarantine from a recent chartered flight just over 3 weeks ago except for 2 earlier carriers.
The flight landed 73 passengers from Brisbane, Australia, and 25 were tested positive plus 6 frontline nurses on duty at the quarantine locations where the passengers were isolated.