The National Department of Health’s use of the COVIDConnect platform as a contact tracing solution is a misguided attempt to make its previously failed contact tracing more palatable.

This is according to Associate Professor Co-Pierre Georg of the University of Cape Town, a fintech expert who is part of the team behind the development of the Covi-ID QR-based contact tracing solution.

Health Minister Zweli Mkhize recently announced the launch of COVIDConnect – the government’s contact tracing solution which runs on platforms like WhatsApp, SMS, and USSD, and employs a chatbot for its user interface.

Excerpt:

Failed attempt at cellphone tracking

Government has abandoned a previous attempt to conduct contact tracing through cellphone tower location triangulation.

Georg explained this method was flawed because the spatial resolution for cellphone tracking was too low, which meant that a particular device could only be pinpointed to within a certain radius.

“In an urban environment, it’s a radius of about 400m,” Georg explained. “But within that radius, in a township, you can have up to 5,000 people in rural areas, the spatial resolution is much worse.”

“I know that the NDoH had been warned about the shortcomings of this technology and I don’t understand why they chose to still go that route,” Georg noted.

“This could never have worked, and anyone who does even a cursory Google search would have been able to tell that to Zweli Mkhize,” he added. 

Link to the complete article https://mybroadband.co.za/news/software/361219-major-concerns-over-south-africas-covid-19-contact-tracing.html?utm_source=newsletter

The post Major concerns over South Africa’s COVID-19 contact tracing appeared first on EMFSA.

  The “Other” Half of the Spectrum – Thermal and non-thermal effects of non-ionizing radiation exposure

D. Miles  EMFSA  www.emfsa.co.za

Dr. Dimitris Panagopoulos

Dr Erica Mallery-Blythe BMBS (Soton) – UK / USA http://phiremedical.org

https://www.degruyter.com/view/j/reveh.2016.31.issue-3/reveh-2016-0011/reveh-2016-0011.xml

South African Scientist  James Lech

Mr Lech’s CV is included in the link below:

Submission to the Department of Health, South Africa – EMF National Report 2108/2019

Carcinogenicity Studies

Cell Phone Radio Frequency Radiation

https://ntp.niehs.nih.gov/whatwestudy/topics/cellphones/index.html

The Significance of Primary Tumors in the NTP Study of Chronic Rat Exposure to Cell Phone Radiation [Health Matters] https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8866792 and

The Significance of Primary Tumors in the NTP Study of Chronic Rat Exposure to Cell Phone Radiation

Evaluation of the genotoxicity of cell phone radiofrequency radiation in male and female rats and mice following subchronic exposure https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/em.22343

9th October 2019: The World Health Organization’s (WHO) Radiation Programme has an ongoing project to assess potential health effects of exposure to radiofrequency (RF) electromagnetic fields in the general and working population. To prioritize potential adverse health outcomes, WHO conducted a broad international survey in 2018. Ten major topics were identified for which WHO will now commission systematic reviews to analyze and synthesize the available evidence. https://www.who.int/peh-emf/research/rf_ehc_page/en/

29th October, 2019:

“Non-ionizing radiation (radiofrequency), High Priority, ready within 5 Years” 

https://monographs.iarc.fr/news-events/advisory-group-report-on-priorities-for-the-iarc-monographs-during-2020-2024/

EMFSA October 2019 Newsletter

The post SAAPMB Congress 2019 Presentation Notes appeared first on EMFSA.