• Coronavirus, check the phones in Milan. The European Privacy Board: the rules must be respected

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March 21, 2020 Singapore recorded the first deaths related to the new Coronavirus: two people - a 75-year-old woman from Singapore and a 64-year-old Indonesian man, the Ministry of Health said, specifying that both victims had previous illnesses.

According to the latest official bulletin, issued by the health authorities on Friday, there are 385 cases of infection in the city-state.

The TraceTogether app
Meanwhile, the government has decided to use technology to take contagions into account with a contact tracing application. Singapore launched the TraceTogether smartphone app to track users' contacts and allow authorities to identify those who have been exposed to coronavirus-infected people and try to curb the spread of the disease.

The app records the exchange of signals via Bluetooth between other phones, and detects who is in the vicinity, within two meters away. The data is stored on the same device through the app, which was developed by the Singapore Government Technology Agency (GovTech) and the Ministry of Health.

Stored on devices and encrypted, it will not be possible to access other information, such as user geolocation. In case of need, users will have to transmit the data recorded by their smartphones to the health authorities, who cannot access it independently, says an official note.

The contact tracing option
In Singapore's strategy to fight the virus, there is not only contact tracing but a mix of initiatives, from police investigators to security cameras to track down suspected carriers of the virus.

The use of technology to anonymously identify citizens' movements using smartphones is also used in Italy, as has been made known in Lombardy. The use of technology to keep track of movements with aggregate data that cannot be traced back to individual users is not excluded by the Privacy Authorities, provided they respect the legal limits .

The help of technology
The World Health Organization has also encouraged the use of 'contact tracing' - in this traditional case - since the Ebola epidemic in Africa, and in 2017, it explained why it is important: "Carefully observe contacts after exposure to a infected person helps to have treatments and cures and prevents further transmission of the virus. " The monitoring process is divided into 3 phases: identification of the person in contact with the sick, identification of their movements and interactions, follow-up. The hope, for many, is that technology can help shorten these steps and make the response to the spread of the virus faster.