Thai government shuts down Mor Chana contact-tracing app

The Mor Chana contact-tracing app is no more, with the Public Health Ministry confirming it has been shut down. Officials say the app is no longer required and therefore was closed yesterday, in light of Thailand’s improving Covid-19 situation.

Unlike the Mor Prom app, which was created to record an individual’s vaccination status, track vaccine side-effects, and provide data on the national vaccine rollout, the Mor Chana app was developed to track users’ whereabouts and let them know if they’d been anywhere where Covid-19 infections had been reported. People could use the app to log their whereabouts, be informed of the risks, and know when they’d been in the vicinity of an infected person.

According to a Bangkok Post report, the app classified Covid-19 cases into 4 groups. They were: a very low-risk group who had been close to asymptomatic cases, a low-risk group who had been close to people with symptoms, a moderate-risk group who’d been near people recently arrived from abroad, and a high-risk group who’d been near people with Covid symptoms who had recently arrived from overseas.

Healthcare workers were also able to use the app to judge risk levels for themselves and how best to protect themselves. Mor Chana also kept people informed about the Covid situation in Thailand, including the number of new cases, as well as allowing business owners to assess the risk of infection among their employees.

SOURCE: Bangkok Post