The Albanese Government has axed the “wasteful and ineffective” COVIDSafe app — saying it cost $21 million and identified only two positive virus cases.
Health Minister Mark Butler said the app, which was launched in April 2020, identified only 17 close contacts over the past two years that hadn’t already been found through manual contact tracing.
“This failed app was a colossal waste of more than $21 million of taxpayers’ money,” he said.
“The former prime minister said this app would be our ‘sunscreen’ against COVID-19 — all it did was burn through taxpayers’ money.
“This failed app only found two unique positive COVID cases at the cost of more than $10 million each.
“It was contact tracers working on the ground who were the real success story.”
Users of the app had been prompted to accept an update this week with the message that it was being decommissioned.
“The COVIDSafe app is no longer being used to assist health officials with contact tracing,” the message said.
“Data is no longer collected and will be deleted from the National COVIDSafe Data Store.
“Data on your device will be deleted when you uninstall the app.”
When former prime minister Scott Morrison rolled out the app, he touted it as “a way out of lockdowns” for Australia.
But it was met with skepticism from the Australian public, with less than 800 of the 7.9 million users consenting to their data being added to the National COVIDSafe Data Store for contact tracing.
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