San Juan proposes centralized contact tracing app

MANILA, Philippines — San Juan Mayor Francis Zamora is calling for a centralized contact tracing app for the entire Metro Manila.

Taking his cue from the mayors of Pasig, Mandaluyong, Valenzuela and Antipolo City, Zamora proposed a uniform contact tracing app or a merger of databases of each application being used by 16 cities and the lone municipality of Pateros.

“It would be ideal to have a centralized contact tracing app. However, some local government units have been using their own app so integration would be important here,” Zamora told “The Chiefs” on OneNews/TV5 on Wednesday night.

The cities of Pasig, Mandaluyong, Valenzuela and Antipolo each have their own contact tracing apps but recently merged their systems.

With the merger, any quick response code from PasigPass, MandaTrack, Antipolo Bantay COVID-19 and ValTrace are interoperable in any of the four cities.

The merger also linked the contact tracing databases of the cities, which means the LGUs can determine where an infected or close contact has been even outside their city, but only in areas covered in the integration.

Zamora said integrating contact tracing apps should aid in the investigative efforts of local governments to trace where a certain contact or infected person has been.

“It’s not just signing up through a QR code,” Zamora said. “Real contact tracing is investigative in nature. It should determine where a person contracted the virus, who the close contacts were and where they had been.”