KUCHING, March 26 — Those entering Sarawak will be ordered to wear QR-coded wristbands following the roll-out of a digital surveillance solution by the Sarawak Multimedia Authority (SMA) to curb the spread of Covid-19 in the state.

SMA general manager Zaidi Razak today said the solution will give the state Disaster Management Committee the scalable capability to monitor the infectious disease at all of Sarawak’s Points of Entry (POE).

"On top of the mandatory health declaration, approved persons entering Sarawak will be issued a QR-coded wristband based on the categories they fall under,” he said in a statement, adding that the categories are Persons-Under-Investigation (PUI) and 14-day Stay Home Notice (SHN).

"On a twice-daily basis, wearers are required to report their situation by scanning their wristband’s QR code to submit a set of information.

"Data collated will allow the committee to make informed decisions as well as to conduct random checks on the wearers.

"The wearers’ location will enable the committee to establish hotspots, a key strategy to isolate the further spread of the disease,” he said.

Zaidi said variations of the tracker system have been deployed in China, Singapore, South Korea and Hong Kong where the data collected was crucial to managing the evolution of the virus.

"We are confident that this system will make the task of managing the outbreak effective and in a timely manner given the vastness of Sarawak,” he stressed.

With the time frame given, Zaidi said the development team has made tremendous achievements within a three-day period to come up with the solution.

The state Disaster Management Committee had earlier enlisted SMA to develop a digital system to track any person who is undergoing self-quarantine for Covid-19.

The digital surveillance solution will also be used at medical centres in Sarawak for the PUI Hospital Quarantine category.

"Ultimately, this solution will be integrated into the ‘Permission to Enter/Exit’ system to effectively monitor Sarawak’s POEs,” he said.