All residents in Singapore to get wearable virus contact tracing device – minister

Singapore plans to give a wearable device that will identify people who had interacted with carriers of coronavirus to all of its 5.7 million residents, according to the minister in charge of the city-state’s smart nation initiative.

“We are developing and will soon roll out a portable wearable device that will… not depend on possession of a smartphone,” Vivian Balakrishnan said on Friday.

The small device, which can be worn on the end of a lanyard or carried in a handbag, follows glitches with an earlier smartphone-based Bluetooth system.

Many experts have raised privacy concerns about contact tracing devices. Singapore has said data collected through its earlier app is encrypted and stored locally in the user’s phone, and will only be transferred to authorities if the individual is confirmed to be infected, Reuters reported.