Coronavirus Exposure Notification App will Help Diagnose and Care for Contacts More Quickly, Official

Director of epidemiology and disease control at the Ministry of Health Mohamed El Youbi said, on Monday in Rabat, that the application for notification and monitoring of possible cases of exposure to the coronavirus, which will be launched soon, will make it possible to diagnose the contacts of persons who tested positive to Covid-19 and provide them with medical care more quickly.

El Youbi stressed, during a remote joint press conference with the Interior Ministry on the presentation of this application, that this application, which will be called “Wiqaytna”, is part of the strengthening of the contact notification system for cases tested positive to Covid-19, since it will help provide medical care for contacts before symptoms appear, avoid complications and deaths and curb the transmission of the virus to other people and its spread in society.

This application will be based on the exchange of the user’s identity via Bluetooth between two smartphones, one of which belongs to a person who will be identified later as a confirmed case of infection, while the second phone belongs to the contact who will receive a notification including a set of recommendations related to the health care for his case, he said.

He also noted that this IT solution will allow the national health system to have an additional channel to identify and follow up contacts, and will also help the country avoid the third phase of the epidemic, and to take the necessary decisions and measures to contain and overcome the spread of this pandemic.

For his part, governor-director of computer systems and communication at the Interior Ministry Abdelhak El Harrak explained that this application, a pure Moroccan product, was developed by a team of 40 people from the different public and private sectors, based on the principles of collective intelligence, innovation and flexibility, noting that this project was marked by the voluntary participation of a group of emerging national companies.

El Harrak also stressed that the concern to protect lives and private data of citizens has always been at the heart of the project, adding that this application, which will be downloaded voluntarily by citizens, will only be used during the pandemic period.

The application will be available on “Play Store”, “iOS” and “Huawei”, he said, noting that all the data that will be stored by the application will be deleted after the end of the pandemic.

The official also said that a large-scale trial of the application will be launched, starting next week, in some centers of the Sherifian Phosphate Office group (OCP), pending the launch of the first version of the application later.

This application was developed under the supervision of the Ministries of the Interior and of Health, in cooperation with the Digital Development Agency (ADD) and the National Telecommunications Regulatory Agency (ANRT), with the contribution of several national companies.