Singapore has admitted data collected for contact-tracing can be accessed by police despite earlier assurances it would only be used to fight the coronavirus, sparking privacy concerns about the scheme.

The city-state has a programme called “TraceTogether” for tracking close contacts of Covid-19 patients, that works via both a phone app and a dongle.

However, a senior official admitted in parliament that police could “obtain any data” — including information gathered through the contact-tracing programme — in the course of a criminal investigation.

Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishan said later that, to his knowledge, police had so far only accessed contact-tracing data on one occasion, during a murder probe, AFP reported.