Malaysia COVID App launch to help in combating COVID-19 pandemic outbreak. That is to say, Malaysia is trying to get the available technology to help in combating COVID-19 in Malaysia. Similar efforts is found in South Korea and China on using mobile apps to help in combating COVID-19. For instance, Corona 100m from South Korea and China’s Close Contact Detector.

Here are the few apps that the government is introducing:

mySejahtera

mySejahtera  is publish in App Store and Play Store including Huawei’s AppGallery. This application allows users to access COVID-19 health risk for personal and family. Apart from that, the app provides COVID-19 health guidelines and guidance based on COVID-19 risk category. In addition, users also get information about nearest health facilities and latest information about COVID-19.

myTrace

Minister of Science and Technology, Khairy Jamaluddin revealed in his tweet that Malaysia local developer is working on a contact tracing mobile application. This app plans to help in contact tracing effort for COVID-19 in Malaysia.

This application with the name myTrace uses Bluetooth technology to scan for nearby contacts. If one of the contacts report to have positive in COVID-19 test, the Kementerian Kesihatan Malaysia (KKM) could quickly inform all the close contacts. Moreover, Khairi also mentions that the app uses Bluetooth instead of GPS. In other words, it does not stores location information, which seems to take care of users privacy data.

myTrace App will act as a complimentary app to mySejaterah which is a health risk monitoring against COVID-19. Although this app’s beta version is yet to be publish in App Store or Play Store, we heard that it should be publishing in few days’ time.

Gerak Malaysia

Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) introduced Gerak Malaysia to help in contact tracing. This application uses GPS in tracking users whereabouts and whether the users is close contact with a positive COVID-19 case.

Although it is released in App Store and Play Store, verification is not done by National
Security Council (NSC) due to the location data which may have privacy breach.

The app does has QR code functionality which helps to identify individual and their risk category in COVID-19 which deem useful for authorities. In Gerak Malaysia’s privacy policy, it says that the location data will be removed 6 months after the end of Movement Control Order (MCO). Thus, users please install at your own risk!

We hope that government could consolidate and utilize the resources between department. Enabling cross department communication to achieve maximum potential on combating the COVID-19. Nevertheless, we would like to take this opportunity to thank all the front-liners as well as those who have contributed during the time of COVID-19 outbreak.
In the mean time, Creative Now would like to contribute to the community by giving out free Google Classroom Tutorial to ease students and teachers on learning from home. View the post here.