MANILA, Philippines — The use of contact-tracing application StaySafe.ph will be fully implemented in the next 10 days, Malacañang said Friday.
Presidential spokesperson Harry Roque said all problems with the application’s use have been finally ironed out.
“Wala na pong problema sa StaySafe app. As of yesterday, lahat ng gusot naiplantsa na. Full implementation of StaySafe app within 10 days,” Roque said in a televised briefing.
(There are no more problems with the StaySafe app. As of yesterday, all problems have been ironed out. Full implementation of StaySafe app within 10 days.)
“We will implement StaySafe once and for all. The end-user will now be DILG [Department of the Interior and Local Government] because DILG in the first place is in charge of contact tracing,” he added.
Local government units (LGUs) that have their own contract tracing applications must integrate it with the StaySafe.ph app, Roque added.
It was back in November 2020 when the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF) made the use of StayStay.ph app mandatory for national government agencies and LGUs.
Despite this, lawmakers found there was no unified national contact tracing system in use after various contact tracing applications had emerged.
Even Roque himself has admitted that contact tracing is the “weakest” point in the government’s COVID-19 response.