Nearly four weeks after it was first announced, government\u2019s plan to use cellphone data to track the movement of people with the coronavirus is still not operational.<\/p>\n
The Sunday Times<\/a> <\/strong>reports that not a single person has been tracked using the technology, with experts indicating that South Africa’s cellphone triangulation may not be good enough for the task.<\/p>\n Cyanre Digital Forensic Lab\u2019s Danny Myburgh said that this was a particular problem in the country’s rural areas, where base stations are kilometres apart.<\/p>\n Other experts have warned that South Africa simply does not have the capacity to interpret this data at a mass scale as required.<\/p>\n Government confirmed to the Sunday Times that it was still finalising the use of the technology.<\/p>\n “We are finalising the data linkages to receive the information, and this is not fully operational as yet,” a Department of Health spokesperson said.<\/p>\n “We have been continuing with our current method of contact tracing until the IT system is fully functional.”<\/p>\n Regulations<\/strong><\/p>\n The tracking system was first announced at the start of the country’s lockdown in a set of regulations published by minister of Communications and Digital Technologies, Stella Ndabeni-Abrahams.<\/p>\n The\u00a0regulations<\/a> <\/strong>require network operators to provide location data to help the government track the spread of the Covid-19 coronavirus.<\/p>\n \u201cThe industry collectively has agreed to provide data analytics services in order to help government,\u201d Ndabeni-Abrahams said at the time.<\/p>\n \u201cThis was to help inform the Department of Health with estimates of how many people are infected in a particular area, and \u201cto look at the individuals that are affected,\u201d Ndabeni-Abrahams said.<\/p>\n