Forgot to ‘check-out’ on MySejahtera? You didn’t ‘spend the night’ there

Since the "check-out" functionality was introduced in MySejahtera, many users have complained that the lack of reminders or automation has led them to forget to use the feature until they have long departed the venue where they have "checked-in".

This has even prompted a parody “MySejahtera” Twitter account to be set up on Twitter reminding users to check-out after they leave a location, while Health Minister Khairy Jamaluddin joked about inadvertently “spending the night” at a supermarket after forgetting to check out. 

However, the Health Ministry clarified today that people who forget to check out would not be treated as though they’ve spent the night at the location where they have last checked in.

Its Crisis Preparedness and Response Centre (CPRC) data chief Dr Mahesh Appannan said prior to the check-out feature being implemented, the MySejahtera’s contact tracing system uses sequential check-ins to determine how long a person might have stayed at a certain location.

“For example, if a person checks in at Restaurant X at 7pm and Restaurant Y at 8pm, you were at Restaurant X for no more than an hour.

“If there is an outlier in the sequence of check-ins (for example, you have returned home and only leave the next day), the system detects it as an outlier and uses an average time period instead (based on location, time, and demography).

“This average is extremely stable because it is calculated from billions of check-ins,” he said.

His explanation first appeared on his Twitter account this morning and was later shared by the Health Ministry on its official social media channels.

Old system still in place

According to Mahesh, the old system is still in place following the implementation of the check-out feature.

Although the new system will enable more accurate contact tracing, it retains the ability to detect cases where a person is likely to have forgotten to check out and uses an average duration instead.

“For instance, a user checks in at Restaurant X at 7pm and checks out at 8am the next day.

“The system will see - on average - how long a user would spend at this location if the check-in time was 7pm. This average figure replaces the misleading check-out time.

“We, therefore, encourage people to use the check-out functionality. It helps us help you. However, if you forget, don’t worry. We won’t think that you’re spending the entire night at work, or at a restaurant,” he said.

MySejahtera’s contact tracing system is used to flag people as “casual contacts” if they were at the same time and place as a Covid-19 patient, based on their check-in data.

An average of 57,302 people was flagged as casual contacts per day in the last seven days up to yesterday, according to data published by the Health Ministry on its Github repository. 

Casual contacts are not required to undergo quarantine unlike close contacts, but must monitor and report their symptoms daily via MySejahtera for two weeks.

The check-out function was rolled out early this month to improve the accuracy of this functionality. 

At a press conference last week, Khairy conceded that many are finding the check-out function hard to comply and the ministry is looking for ways to improve this feature. - Mkini