This appeared over the weekend.
'Dishonest': COVIDSafe app has not detected a case despite 6 million downloads
By Ben Grubb
June 28, 2020 — 12.00am
The federal government's COVIDSafe app has not identified any close contacts of a person infected with coronavirus who had not already been found through manual contact tracing, despite being downloaded by more than 6 million Australians in two months.
As the number of infections soars in Victoria, Centre Alliance senator Rex Patrick said the government was being dishonest about the effectiveness of the app, which Prime Minister Scott Morrison touted as "sunscreen" against major outbreaks and as the key to lifting restrictions.
Senator Patrick, who has an engineering background and was a project manager involved in rapid-prototyping and testing, said the government was refusing to concede the app "wasn't working properly, if at all".
"I think the Prime Minister and the government were dishonest with the Australian public and I think that that's very sad," said the senator, a supporter of the app concept who himself was diagnosed with COVID-19.
The $2 million app — downloaded more than 6.44 million times and launched amid the height of the pandemic in Australia on April 26 — was built to help assist state and territory contact-tracing teams uncover close contacts of infected COVID-19 cases who may have been within 1.5 metres of them for more than 15 minutes in public places such as restaurants, cafes or shops.
But testing data provided to the Senate showed its effectiveness, particularly on Apple iPhones, remains an ongoing issue.
The testing data, released to the Senate's select committee on COVID-19, shows when an iPhone is locked there remain issues with the app detecting another nearby iPhone user. Only 25 to 50 per cent of the time did it work on May 26 in locked iPhone-to-iPhone testing.
At launch, it was worse, working only 25 per cent of the time or less for locked iPhone to locked iPhone. When it was running in the background, the app also didn't work well.
Issues were also prevalent on Android smartphones, with problems remaining on May 26, especially when the app's testers tried to get iPhones and Androids to share information.
At the app's launch, Government Services Minister Stuart Robert said: "To be effective, users should have the app running in the background when they are coming into contact with others. Your phone does not need to be unlocked for the app to work."
Labor's government services spokesman Bill Shorten accused the government of being "secretive" about the app's dysfunction.
"The current app is clearly not working well enough and the government is being secretive about how often it has actually made a difference," Mr Shorten said.
"COVIDSafe has had major problems from the start like not working properly on iPhones ... After millions of taxpayers’ dollars have been spent, the app would want to start showing some proper results soon for it not to be added to the pile of Stuart Robert's disasters."
Lots more here:
As suggested on the blog or so a week or two back, and now confirmed by Ben Grubb over the weekend we have pretty good public health department trackers and tracers who were doing a pretty good job and were not all that much assisted by a rather poorly functioning app.
Yet again another example of how initiatives goes to custard when Minister Stuart Robert goes anywhere near them. The man is a walking and not very honest disaster zone as far as I can tell!
David.
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