The Federal Government concedes that its COVIDSafe app has been “rarely used”. 

A long-delayed official report into the COVIDSafe app has been released. It says the app, originally, promoted as a key measure in the fight against COVID-19, was only “rarely” used. The report says low community transmission rates and strong manual contact tracing ended up doing much of the work.

The report was only released after the Department of Health was forced to release a draft evaluation following a freedom of information request.

Legislation governing COVIDSafe requires reporting after a six-month period, to be provided to parliament within 15 sitting days. The official report covers two six-month reporting periods. 

It reveals that out of almost 8 million app registrations, just 779 users who tested positive to COVID-19 consented to having data from the app uploaded to the national COVIDSafe data store. 

The app registered 37,668 ‘handshakes’ between devices “within 1.5 metres for 15 minutes or more”, 2,827 of which were “unique potential close contacts”.

However, this converted to just “81 close contacts, including 17 contacts that were not identified by manual contact tracing” in NSW.

Victoria “reported that over 1,800 cases said that they have the app”, but did not identify any new close contacts not identified by manual contact tracing.

The report says Queensland and South Australia had “very low numbers of community transmission and have not identified additional contacts” using the app, while Western Australia, Tasmania and the ACT were found to have “not had a need to use the app”.

“Jurisdictions have reported that in the instance of low community prevalence… using long established manual contact tracing protocols and procedures tends to be sufficient,” the report says.

Low case numbers, contract racing and QR codes allegedly “created an environment in which it has rarely been necessary for public health officials to use the app”.

“The app was deployed in anticipation of widespread community transmission… with the aim of enabling quick contact with people who many have come into contact with [COVID-19],” it said.

“With the success of the suppression strategy, only 0.03 percent of the Australian population were infected at the peak of the pandemic… (including those in hotel quarantine).

“This success has meant the app’s ability to identify unique close contacts has not been called upon to a significant extent.”