I Suspect We Are All Pretty Sick Of Being Treated Like Mushrooms On Federal Digital Health.

A good example appeared last week when we finally saw some information on the utility of the COVIDSafe app well over 12 months after it was released.

We saw coverage here:

Govt releases overdue COVIDSafe app report

Joseph Brookes
Senior Reporter

30 July 2021

Fewer than 800 people who tested positive for coronavirus in Australia had the COVIDsafe app and shared its data for contact tracing, according to a long-overdue government report into the effectiveness of its mobile app.

COVIDSafe uses a smartphone’s Bluetooth technology to log close contacts or ‘digital handshakes’ between users, and then sends these to a national database and to state health authorities if a user tests positive for the COVID-19 virus.

According to a new Department of Health report, 779 people who tested positive for COVID-19 had the app and consented to do this, revealing 1.65 million “digital handshakes” with other COVIDSafe users and 2,827 potential close contacts being identified from 37,668 encounters.

There have been 7.6 million app registrations, according to the report, which covers the period between 26 April 2020 to 15 May 2021. The report does not say how many active users there are of the app.

The report confirms only 17 of the contacts were not already identified by manual contact tracing and that all of these contacts were in New South Wales in 2020. It mentions the NSW figure and notes the app also helped identify an exposure site which had another 544 potential contacts. But the new report does not mention any other contacts found through the app that were not also found through manual tracing.

More details here:

https://www.innovationaus.com/govt-releases-overdue-covidsafe-app-report/

and further coverage here:

Govt concedes COVIDSafe app 'rarely used' in overdue report

By Justin Hendry on Jul 30, 2021 7:00AM

Puts it down to low transmission rates and strong manual tracing.

The federal government has finally released its first official report into the COVIDSafe app, conceding the app is "rarely" used but attributing that to low community transmission rates and strong manual contact tracing.

The overdue report comes a week after the Department of Health was forced to release a draft evaluation on the app's operation and effectiveness following a freedom of information request.

It covers two six-month reporting periods instead of the single six-month period outlined in legislation governing COVIDSafe, which also requires that the department provide the report to parliament within 15 sitting days.

The report, published this week, reveals that 779 users who tested positive to Covid-19 consented to having data from the app uploaded to the national COVIDSafe data store between 26 April 2020 and 15 May 2021.

During that 12 month period, there were 7,418,328 app registrations, with only 242,272 of these occurring in the second reporting period between 15 November 2020 and 15 May 2021.

Approximately 23,000 positive cases were recorded across Australia between 26 April 2020 and 15 May 2021, according to official government figures.

All but 44 of the 779 uploads (users) took place between 26 April 2020 and 16 November 2020, with the remainder between 16 November 2020 and 15 May 2021.

The vast majority of uploads were from users located in Victoria (649), with 625 of these also occurring in the first six months. All remaining uploads (125) were from NSW users.

Much more here:

https://www.itnews.com.au/news/govt-concedes-covidsafe-app-rarely-used-in-overdue-report-568030

Basically it seems for millions of dollars and ongoing spending we found only 17 cases over 18 or so months that manual contact tracing had not found prior!

Even worse the app and its functionality seems to now require a major overhaul to cope with the pesky Delta Variant of COVID19.

A flop that the Government delayed telling us about for as long as they could, and now needs a big fix!

Of course to improve the Government’s reputation for transparency we have the omnishambles of the #myHealthRecord.

They hold billions of pieces of data but little is known about how much is still useful – they have been piling data elements up for over 8 years now remember and data is hardly like wine as it ages! We also do not know how much of the data relates to people who have died. Does anyone know of records from the dead are deleted?

You can read the glitzy presentation on the wonders of the #myHealthRecord - by the ADHA - here:

https://www.digitalhealth.gov.au/initiatives-and-programs/my-health-record/statistics

But what is missing is the evidence that there are real clinical or economic benefits coming from this $2.0 Billion system. You can be sure if the evidence existed it would be on the ADHA home page!

So far I see no deviation from the ‘mushroom treatment’!

David.