Are Contact Tracing Apps Effective?

MySejahtera, MyTrace, and SELangkah are among the apps that are available to help manage the COVID-19 outbreak in Malaysia. They each work in different ways, and perform different functions. But it can be confusing if you’re trying to figure out which app you should download, especially amid concerns about privacy, data security and efficacy. We ask Dr Helmi Zakariah, member of the Selangor Task Force For COVID-19 (STFC), who specialises in digital epidemiology, to help us unpack all these apps, and to look at how they play a role in dealing with the pandemic.