Catching the invisible criminal, Covid-19: How the police work on contact tracing

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SINGAPORE – His brief was simple. Identify and find a passenger who had taken a taxi whose driver had Covid-19.

But all Senior Staff Sergeant Mohamad Shapie Saleh had to go on were that the passenger had alighted at Chai Chee Road and a blurred photo, obtained from a different police team, that gave him a rough idea of the man’s attire.

Senior Staff Sgt Shapie spent around four hours scouring footage from over 40 closed circuit television (CCTV) cameras at five blocks in the area to find out where the passenger had gone.

“We needed to exercise patience and concentration,” he said, adding that they had to scrutinise every single figure in the footage.

His work is but part of an extensive police operation that runs round the clock to assist the Ministry of Health (MOH) in contact tracing.

About 30 to 50 police officers are on contact-tracing duty on any given day, although police said numbers can be scaled quickly to 100 if the need arises

The work is first undertaken by Health Ministry staff, who conduct detailed interviews with confirmed cases and identify close contacts within 24 hours of confirming the case.

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