Ministry of Digital Transformation and Ministry of Health develop a tracking mechanism to send contact persons to self-isolation
The Ministry of Digital Transformation and the Ministry of Health are developing a mechanism to send people who have been in contact with COVID-19 patients to self-isolation, but it will require changes in legislation.
The Minister of Health Maksym Stepanov announced this on the air of the "Svoboda Slova" program on the ICTV TV channel.
"Currently, the Ministry of Digital Transformation together with the Ministry of Health is developing all mechanisms for tracking and sending people to self-isolation who have been in contact with COVID-19 patients, but again it will require significant changes to our legislation," Stepanov said.
According to him, the idea means that everyone who has been in contact with a sick person should receive a text message, and a person should immediately go to self-isolation. The punishment will be envisioned in case a person doesn't comply with the self-isolation requirements with access to personal data to perform such control automatically.
"In order for this to work, it's necessary to make proper changes in the legislation. We will prepare these changes, submit, and discuss when we form the concept of automatic tracking of COVID-19 patients," Stepanov said.
Meanwhile, he noted the automatic tracking of contacts with COVID-19 patients has worked in Asian countries.
When a program host noted that it's the eighth month of the pandemic in Ukraine, and there's no tracking system, Stepanov said that the Ministry of Health could not be responsible for everything in the country.
"We have a Ministry of Digital Transformation that deals with this application. As for the Ministry of Health, we and health workers conducted epidemiological investigations and entered these people into the database, but unfortunately, the main issue is the control over people who should be in isolation. When we entered 120-130 thousand people in self-isolation into a database at once, let's be honest, nobody controlled them," Stepanov said.