Australia retires $21m CovidSafe contact-tracing app that found just two unique cases

Australia’s CovidSafe app is being decommissioned because it is no longer being used for Covid-19 contact tracing.

The app cost around $75,000 a month to run and was touted by former prime minister Scott Morrison as an important measure on par with wearing sunscreen.

It was barely used in the Delta and Omicron outbreaks despite more than 7 million Australians downloading it to help contact tracers, and since launching in April 2020, just 17 “close contacts” in New South Wales were found directly through the app that were not otherwise identified through manual contact-tracing methods.

On Tuesday users of the app were offered an update that “removes functionality of the app so no information is stored or collected”.

“This will enable [the] decommission process of CovidSafe,” it said, citing the fact the app “is no longer being used in contact tracing”.

In a statement the health minister, Mark Butler, said “this failed app was a colossal waste of more than $21m of taxpayers money”.

Butler revealed Covidsafe “only found two unique positive Covid cases at the cost of more than $10m each”.

“It is clear this app failed as a public health measure and that’s why we’ve acted to delete it.”

On 31 July Butler made a determination the app “is no longer required to prevent or control; the entry, emergence, establishment or spread of the coronavirus known as Covid‑19”.

The Privacy Act states that the chief medical officer or the Australian Health Protection Principal Committee must be consulted before such a move.

The determination will end the collection of data on the app from 16 August, means it will no longer be available to be downloaded, and requires that all data collected on it be deleted “as soon as reasonably practicable”. Butler confirmed no CovidSafe app data will be retained.

In December, a report on the operation of the app, released this month, revealed between May and November 2021, contact tracers downloaded data from the app just 13 times, with only two potential close contacts identified through the app.

Since its launch in 2020, there had been 792 people with Covid uploading data from the app, with 2,829 potential close contacts identified.

In April 2020, Morrison described the app as “your ticket … to a Covid-safe Australia where we can go about the things that we love doing once again”.

“Downloading the app is like putting on sunscreen to go out into the sun. It gives us protection as a nation.”

In July 2020 Morrison said it would “ridiculous” and “dangerous” to stop using the app, suggesting its limited use was due to low Covid case numbers and download rates.

“We’re at about 40% downloads across the potential population who can download that app.

“Now, that means there’s 60% of the population who hasn’t, but at 40%, that’s one of the highest rates for an app of that sort in the world. And so it is an important safeguard.”