Siri will help you figure out if you have COVID-19, but it doesn’t really work in Malaysia

It’s rough these days. With a virus that spreads as easily as COVID-19 does, with symptoms often only showing up days after you’re infected, I can only imagine how anxious it makes the people. Every morning when I wake up, and if I’m sniffling, or feeling a little off, I start panic-googling my symptoms and how to get tested for COVID-19.

Now though, you won’t necessarily have to panic-google your symptoms if you’re on an Apple device because the company just rolled up an update to Siri so you can ask your favourite virtual assistant instead. All you need to do to start is say “Hey Siri, do I have the coronavirus?” or some variation of that. Using “COVID-19” instead, works too.

Once you’ve done that, Siri will launch into a special flow chart question-and-answer mode where it will ask you a couple of questions, and depending on your response, provide you with the necessary information. For example, if I answered no to all the questions asked:

On the other hand, if I answered yes to all the responses:

If, however, you say that your symptoms are not extreme or life-threatening you’ll get this response instead:

If you answer not sure, here’s the response thread:

The answers are pretty generic, yes, but it’s almost impossible to give any kind of detailed diagnosis over your smartphone. What’s cool here is that Siri will direct you to official sources of information, and even offer to call emergency services should you feel ill.

However, the official source and emergency service that’s being offered is specific to their American users. What I then found out was that this was because of the language I had set my Siri to. Since it was on English (US), I was getting the American results. Switching to English (Malaysia) I got…

…oh, wait there’s no English (Malaysia). There is, however, an English (Singapore) which you can also ask. Doing so, you won’t get the question-and-answer response, but will instead get directed directly to Singapore’s ministry of health. The same response also applies to the other forms of English supported by Siri as well as Chinese.

Seeing as our national language was Malay, I tried switching my language to Malay and asking a translated version of the question, but that didn’t actually work at all. All I got was a bunch of search results…which is the same as what I would get from Googling.

That being said, the precautions Siri gives us is pretty much identical no matter where you are in the world. Should you need updated information about Malaysia that comes from a reliable source, you can always check out our Malaysian Health Ministry’s twitter account @KKMPutrajaya. Our emergency services can be reached by dialing 999 on your device or 112 from your mobile.

And of course, I can’t stress this enough, you should stay at home and stay indoors during this MCO. I know it can get tough sometimes, but it’s the best thing we can do to help flatten the curve. Today, we have a total of 212 new cases, bringing our total to 1,518 infected. 159 have recovered, but 14 have also died.

As the number of patients grow, it’s important that we do not stress and overwhelm our healthcare system so the people who really need care can get the care they require. Practice good hygiene and stay safe, everyone. If you get bored and need someone to talk to, you can always hit us up on our Facebook group RKMD where we talk tech and everything that matters.