The airport won't open on August 15th - but the Prime Minister says it
may open in September and tonight we have part two of our story on how
tourists and returning residents will be tracked and monitored.
There is a specific plan for returning Belizeans and other persons who
will be staying in the country for a more extended period. Daniel Ortiz
has that story:
We've already told you how tourists - when they do come - will be kept
within a safe corridor. Then, there is the other group of travellers, such
as a returning Belizean, a person who owns a home and resides in Belize
temporarily or permanently, or business travellers. They will have a
different procedure to follow.
Mike Singh - Chief Technology Officer, CITO
"Those people will come into the airport. They will be subjected to a
24-hour quarantine, mandatory. They will go through the health clinic. They
will be swabbed, and then, they will be taken directly to a 24-hour
quarantine area, which will be a hotel of some kind, awaiting the result of
that PCR test. Once the test result comes through, if it is a positive
test, they will then be transferred to a 14-day quarantine, until the COVID
symptoms and the disease itself have come out of their system. If it's
negative, they will be permitted to self-quarantine for 14 days. Now, how
are we going to help them to self-quarantine where we feel safe? There are
2 tools that we'll use technology-wise. One of them is an app, which is
called the Guardian Angel app, which is separate from the one I spoke
about. That app is ready."
"So, that app has the ability to geo-fence. What Geo-fence means is
that once you download it on your device, it will create a fence around
any area that we designate as a geo-fence. And that area will mean that
once you stay within that area, it will be monitored in a central area,
to see where you are - or at least where your telephone is. Now, of
course, we can argue all day that somebody can leave their telephone.
They can use another phone. We don't really know where they are.
However, there's a lot of built-in mechanisms for us to do two-way
communication with them. So that if we suspect that somebody is out,
but their phone is there, we can then do a two-way communication
ascertain that perhaps the phone never moved. We can know if the
battery is out on the phone. We can know they turned off the device. We
will know if they attempt to delete the app. This software, and the
device that we're going to use with it was developed by a company that
specializes in home arrest. So what they have done is they've modified
their application, so that it can be used for quarantine control."
And then, there is this device, 911 Enforcer. It's a water-proof,
shock-proof, and tamper-proof piece of technology that feeds GPS
information in real-time, which can also be used for tracking. They have
modified their version of an ankle bracelet, used in house arrests, to turn
it in a wristwatch. Singh and the other experts working on implementing
this change is hoping that it will be used rarely, and in cases that the
authorities think are high-risk.
Mike Singh
"For the ones that we feel to be very high-risk, which we would love to
have everybody use, We're also using - which you heard about the bracelet,
and I'll be to have you guys be the first to actually see the bracelet.
This bracelet is called a 911 Enforcer. As you can see it's about the size
of a watch that sits on your wrist. Now, I don't want to put it on my wrist
because once it's locked, you can't take it off. It has to be taken off
with a special tool. And it also has a tamper alert. So, if somebody
tampers with the lock that's where - I don't know if you can see that - it
will actually send an alert to the authorities that are monitoring, that
you're trying to tamper with it. It has a two-way speaker. So, you can
speak to the person that's wearing it, and this is independent of the
telephone. So, this is a double layer. So, you have the telephone, which is
the soft enforcement, and then, you have the Enforcer, which is the harder
enforcement. Now, I am hoping that we don't need to put this on everyone
because these are a bit costly. And if there is a way that we can get the
cooperation that will agree that the soft mechanism, which is the telephone
monitoring, is something that they will respect, then we don't need these."
But, in the event that they are deployed, Singh says that there are
benefits to the user who is being required to put them on.
Mike Singh
"The government is not buying them. So, the arrangement that we're making
with the supplier is for a lease. And the way lease works is that you pay
$5 US per day when it's activated. So, if I'm sitting here, like right now,
we're not paying for it. It's not costing me anything to have it here
because it's not turned on. It's not activated. So, that's a lot cheaper
than what you pay to stay at a hotel for a day. So, the way we see it is
that we want to offer the opportunity, for Belizeans to decide that if you
need to quarantine, you can stay at one of the quarantine-authorized
hotels, and pay rate at the hotel, or you can wear one of these bracelets.
We're actually looking at possibly doing a cost recovery on it as well,
where they might be a charge to the user, or to the quarantined person.
Remember, you're not paying for a hotel, which is what the norm would be.
So, we believe that there could be some cost recovery that they could
reimburse for the cost of using these, as an alternative to being in a
hotel. I don't know about you, but if I were given a choice to pay a
nominal fee to wear a bracelet, as opposed to having to stay at the
Princess for 2 weeks, I think I'd take the nominal fee and the bracelet."
Yesterday, Singh told us that the government's plan is to have about
1,000 of these tracking bracelets to utilize in this new quarantine
protocol, whenever the airport opens.
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Mike Singh - Chief Technology Officer, CITO