The Scottish Government has launched a digital service named Check In Scotland to support businesses in collecting details for contact tracing purposes.
It said that so far more than 6,400 venues have signed up to use the voluntary service, which has been developed to speed up the contact tracing of Covid-19 cases.
The services involves people scanning the official Test and Protect Check in Scotland QR code poster via their smartphone camera or by downloading the Check in Scotland app.
Any contact details collected will be held in a secure, encrypted data store unique to each venue for 21 days. Unless information is requested by public health officials as part of their contact tracing efforts, visitor data is automatically deleted on day 22.
Venue and visitor details will not be used for any other purpose, the Scottish Government said.
The service has been made available to pubs, bars, restaurants, cafés, tourism and leisure business, close contact services such as hairdressers and beauticians, libraries, registration officers, undertakers and places of worship.
Quick contact
Chief Medical Officer Dr Gregor Smith said: “As travel, retail and hospitality restrictions begin to ease and venues start to re-open, it’s vital that any close contacts of new positive cases can be quickly contacted and given advice to self-isolate.
“Check in Scotland is designed to give businesses an easy way to collect contact details from customers for contact tracing purposes. It is entirely voluntary and up to individual venues to decide what method they prefer to use to collect the required contact details.2
Alerts will be sent by SMS, email or letter depending on what details users provide and will be clearly marked as being from NHS Scotland Test and Protect.
The Check In Scotland service is designed to complement the separate Protect Scotland app, which alerts users if they have been in close contact with someone who has tested positive for Covid-19.
People will only be advised to self-isolate if contact tracers believe they were in close contact with someone who has tested positive for the coronavirus. Otherwise they may be advised to watch out for symptoms.
The app is available for download from the Apple App Store and Google Play.
Image from Scottish Government
