The Australian government has finally dumped its controversial 'CovidSafe' contact tracing phone app which cost Aussie taxpayers millions.https://t.co/YNMTuRdYAy
— Avi Yemini (@OzraeliAvi) August 10, 2022
Federal Government decommissions $21 million COVIDSafe app as health authorities retreat from contact tracing virus
Health Minister Mark Butler has moved to scrap the “wasteful and ineffective” COVIDSafe app introduced by the former Morrison government – with many Australians questioning if anyone ever even used it to begin with.
The Federal Government has decided to dump the former Morrison government’s “failed” COVIDSafe app which “wasted more than $21 million of taxpayer’s money”.
Health Minister Mark Butler on Wednesday announced Labor was scrapping the “wasteful and ineffective” which only found two positive COVID-19 cases since it was launched in April 2020.
“This is a trademark of the former Government, which treated taxpayer’s money like their own,” he said.
“The former prime minister said this app would be our ‘sunscreen’ against COVID-19 – all it did was burn through taxpayer’s money.”
The Federal Government has decided to ditch the COVIDSafe app introduced by the Morrison Government. Picture: Quinn Rooney/Getty Images
Almost eight million Australians downloaded the app – but it was swiftly criticised for its failure to successfully identify positive cases.
Only 800 users consented to their data being added to the National COVIDSafe Data Store for contact tracing making the app redundant.
Australians instead opted to receive contact tracing information from their state or territory governments.
Since its launch in April 2020 only two positive COVID-19 cases were found through the app without being identified by manual contact traces.
The app also only located 17 close contacts that had not already been identified by manual contact tracing.
“This failed app only found two unique positive COVID cases at the cost of more than $10 million each,” Mr Butler said.
“It was contact tracers working on the ground who were the real success story, not this failed app.
“It is clear this app failed as a public health measure and that’s why we’ve acted to delete it.”