20 WORDS & PHRASES THAT DEFINED 2020
SafeEntry: Ticket to getting into public venues in a new normal
2020 has been a year of upheaval and crisis - one that was shaped by the coronavirus pandemic. It also saw significant developments, such as a general election in Singapore and the United States electing its next leader. In this 12-day series, The Straits Times spotlights 20 words or phrases that defined 2020.
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Lester Wong
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"Checking in" took on a new meaning in 2020 because of the ubiquitous SafeEntry, Singapore's national digital check-in system.
Using SafeEntry to enter any public venue has become part of Singapore residents' everyday routine amid the coronavirus pandemic.
As recently as February, contact tracing was still a strictly low-tech process, which began with getting a confirmed Covid-19 patient warded in hospital to do an activity map of everything he had done and the people he had met over the previous two weeks.
If there were gaps, contact tracing teams would call patients to try and jog their memory.
But as daily new cases hit double, triple and then four digits in April, SafeEntry was born during the circuit breaker period out of the necessity for large-scale contact tracing to curb the spread of Covid-19.
The system, which logs key information, including a person's name, NRIC number and mobile number when users scan a QR code, was first introduced for essential businesses such as clinics, supermarkets and food and beverage outlets.
On May 12, SafeEntry was made mandatory at all workplaces and businesses, including hairdressers, optical shops and cake shops that were allowed to reopen at the time.
A total of 45,000 premises were using SafeEntry by then, up from about 2,100 just two weeks earlier.
SafeEntry evolved rapidly over the next few months.
Initially, the check-in process could be done only by using a smartphone camera to scan a QR code, or by scanning the bar code on NRICs.
By the middle of May, SafeEntry had been integrated into the SingPass Mobile app, a move that was a precursor to Singapore's current model of contact tracing.
Under this latest model, SafeEntry has been subsumed by national contact tracing programme TraceTogether, which comprises an app and token that use proximity data collected via Bluetooth technology to identify people who have come into close contact with Covid-19 cases.
The app includes a function for scanning SafeEntry QR codes, while the tokens sport a QR code with a similar function.
Checking in with the TraceTogether app or token will soon be made mandatory at public venues, including restaurants and shopping malls, once an ongoing exercise to distribute tokens to the public has wrapped up.
The app was launched before SafeEntry in March but had been downloaded by less than half of Singapore's population as at September, well short of the 70 per cent needed for it to be effective.
This was in part due to technical issues with the app - which previously did not work well with iPhones and also caused significant battery drain - as well as privacy concerns from the public.
The idea for a wearable contact tracing device to drive up participation rate was mooted by Minister-in-charge of the Smart Nation Initiative Vivian Balakrishnan in June, with nationwide distribution of the tokens kicking off in September.
This exercise also ran into teething issues, as demand for the tokens surged after the authorities announced on Oct 20 that TraceTogether check-ins would be compulsory at public venues by the end of the year.
Long queues formed at community centres and various collection points around the island.
This led to the Smart Nation and Digital Government Group suspending token collection for one day, before resuming the distribution in a staggered fashion, one constituency at a time.
The participation rate for TraceTogether has since climbed to around 65 per cent as at last Sunday.
Education Minister and co-chairman of the multi-ministry task force tackling Covid-19, Mr Lawrence Wong, said at a recent press conference that Singapore will be able to achieve a participation rate of around 70 per cent by the end of this year.
"But we will not stop there. We want to achieve an even higher participation rate, be it through the downloading of the TraceTogether app or the distribution of tokens which will continue throughout all our community centres," he added.
