Quezon City businesses required to use contact tracing app

MANILA, Philippines — The Quezon City government has approved a measure requiring business establishments to use the “KyusiPass” contact tracing application on or before Aug. 15.

The new measure amends the contact tracing ordinance that gave businesses six months or until October to comply with its provisions.

“We need to immediately implement our digital contact tracing app amid the local transmission of the COVID-19 Delta variant,” Mayor Joy Belmonte said.

“The key to stopping the spread of the highly infectious variant is strengthened contact tracing efforts that we can achieve through KyusiPass,” she added.

Last April, Belmonte approved an ordinance mandating the use of KyusiPass in all business establishments in the city.

The measure set a six-month transition period on the provision requiring businesses to provide a QR code scanner at the entrance of their establishments.

Local officials found the need to immediately implement the ordinance following the detection of the more infectious and transmissible variants of COVID-19.

The measure provides penalties and fines for violators. Several bars have been shut down by the city government for failure to implement the KyusiPass system.

“We discovered that those bars have KyusiPass for display only. When we tried to contact trace their customers, their databases were empty. Such irresponsible behavior renders our contact tracing efforts useless and affects our pandemic response,” Belmonte said.

“With the passage of this ordinance, we can now do random checks on establishments to determine if they are really using the contact tracing app,” Belmonte added.

Violators will be fined P3,000 and penalized with suspension of franchise or business permit for first offense; P5,000 fine, suspension of business permit and temporary closure for second offense, and P5,000 fine, revocation of permit and a closure order for third offense.