MP SPEAKS | Don't hide serious flaws in early warning system

MP SPEAKS | Unless the government intends to paralyse or permanently shut down retail malls and supermarkets, it must suspend the use of the deeply flawed Hotspots Identification for Dynamic Engagement (Hide) system with immediate effect.

The government meant well in implementing such a system for potential Covid-19 breakout areas, in order to steer the public away from areas with elevated risk of contracting the virus. Together with Bank Negara Malaysia, which somehow got involved in this project, the government rolled out the early warning system recently.

According to the Ministry of Science, Technology, and Innovation (Mosti), Hide will predict potential new hotspots for the next seven days based on data collected by the MySejahtera mobile application.

The idea sounds brilliant: stop the spread of Covid-19 before it happens based on data that has been collected by the government.

Unfortunately, it is clear that Hide has been poorly designed and the assumptions behind the data are misguided. Under such circumstances, not only will Hide fail to prevent the transmission of the virus, it can create major unintended negative consequences for businesses, which are already hit badly from the crisis, as well as for the people’s livelihood. This is especially after Defence Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob hastily imposed a three-day shutdown of all locations listed by Hide.

The government should have realised that something was amiss when the overwhelming bulk of the locations listed by Hide were the major shopping malls and supermarkets. Pretty much every single mall of note was listed as a potential cluster based on data collected in the past seven days. This was despite the fact that historical data showed shopping malls contributed to less than five percent of the Covid-19 clusters, as opposed to factories (48 percent) and construction (11.6 percent).

If malls and supermarkets were at such an obvious and critical risk of becoming clusters, they would have become clusters a long time ago, and not only in the next seven days.

It doesn’t take rocket science to figure out how Hide became so deeply flawed. The system designers of Hide had treated all MySejahtera codes "equally" in terms of risk and compliance with standard operating procedures (SOPs). Except that they are not at all equal.

One Utama Shopping Centre in Petaling Jaya and Pavillion Kuala Lumpur has 2.19 million and 1.6 million sq ft in retail space, respectively. Both malls have more than 700 individual outlets and businesses operating within. A walk within the malls these days is often extremely pleasant because the visitor numbers are low and there is plenty of space within the malls. However, One Utama and Pavillion use a single MySejahtera code each.

This contrasts against a typical 2,000 sq ft retail outlet operating in a shoplot or a cramped 1,600 sq ft office space, which both also use a single MySejahtera code each. The latter might be more at risk because they may have higher traffic per square feet, or they have 30 workers squeezed into the same space.

However, in absolute terms, the number of people deemed somewhat "risky" – a methodology that has yet to be clearly clarified by Mosti – will naturally be much higher in malls than that in the individual retail outlets or offices. That’s the simple reason why more than 90 percent of the locations issued by Hide comprised of malls and supermarkets. This is despite the malls presenting no higher risk of becoming Covid-19 clusters or are potentially even safer than other sites.

We call upon the National Security Council and Mosti to immediately suspend the implementation of Hide until and unless the deep flaws in the system are resolved with more intelligent algorithms. Otherwise, we can continue to expect malls to open and shutter every few days simply because they will invariably appear at the top of the Hide list due to the volume of traffic as a natural result of their sheer size of operations.

Unless it is the intent of the government to take this opportunity to victimise all mall and supermarket businesses across the country, putting hundreds of thousands of people out of work, the government must not hide from its terrible Hide system and do the right thing now.

TONY PUA is the MP for Damansara and DAP national publicity secretary.

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