Taiwan offers UK advanced contact tracing system
Cyber security chief says Government can use its source code to help end pandemic lockdown
TAIWAN’S governmental cyber chief has offered to hand the UK the codes behind its advanced tracing technology that could be the golden ticket to ending Britain’s lockdown.
“If your government needs it, we can provide the source code,” said Howard Jyan, who leads Taiwan’s cyber secu
rity department, in an interview with
The Sunday Telegraph.
Taiwan has been recognised as a global leader in the fight against the Covid-19 pandemic, shielding its 23million citizens from the deadly disease through a combination of strict border controls, contact tracing and quarantine, while avoiding a full lockdown and allowing life to remain relatively normal.
The state is among a select few in southeast Asia that have become the envy of the world for their responses to the coronavirus pandemic. Neighbouring South Korea was highlighted for particular praise by the UK’s own deputy scientific adviser last week as the Government announced the early stages of the new app to follow cases.
The secret to Taiwan’s success lies in a fast initial response and early planning.
Despite being located just 80 miles off the coast of China, to date Taiwan has seen only 440 cases and 6 deaths. It has experienced minimal community spread and most cases have been imported from abroad.
As a result, its cyber experts have had months to create two voluntary tracing apps – one for border control and health checks using GPS and one for social distancing using Bluetooth – but have not yet needed to launch them, explained Mr Jyan.
They have been designed along the lines of the methods Taiwan has relied on so far – the less precise, but less invasive use of phone location data, working alongside five national telecoms companies.
When the first inkling of a mystery respiratory illness emerged from China in December, Taiwan acted fast to monitor the health of incoming travellers and control its borders, gradually phasing in 14-day home quarantine, firstly for arrivals from China and adding other countries as the virus spread.
Compulsory quarantine for inbound passengers – a move resisted so far by the UK but which may be adopted this weekend – has been a vital first line of defence in Taiwan’s pandemic response strategy.
Home isolation of new arrivals, most of them returning citizens, is enforced by “base station triangulation”, said Mr Jyan. It operates through a mobile phone-based “electronic fence” that uses location-tracking to ensure quarantined people remain at home.
The system begins at the airport, when arriving passengers fill out a form on their mobile phones and the details are fed into a centralised tracing system. Each case is then assigned a social worker, health and police officer.
The social worker calls twice a day to check the person doesn’t avoid tracking by leaving their phone behind. If a phone is unanswered every 15 minutes for an hour, it prompts a home visit by the police.
In addition, the person’s mobile location is monitored through its communication with the nearest base station, giving a range of about 300 metres. If the phone leaves this area, the user and local officials receive an automated text message alert.
“Everything is based on guidelines to keep the balance between tracing and privacy protection. Using mobile signals is less of a privacy invasion than GPS because GPS is very precise. We only use this rough position,” said Mr Jyan.
To ensure privacy, only the commander of the Central Epidemic Command Centre ( CECC) has access to the names of the mobile phone users, and has a nationwide overview.
Follow-up surveillance is regulated by the Communicable Disease Control Act, drafted after a deadly SARS outbreak in 2003, which places strict curbs on what data can be gathered and for how long it can be retained.