Virus tracking app rolled out
THE Federal Government released a controversial coronavirus tracking app late yesterday after stripping back its functions and beefing up privacy protections.
Health Minister Greg Hunt said the last-minute protections, which were designed to overcome widespread concern about how data would be collected and used, meant access was strictly limited to state health officials with the Commonwealth frozen out.
Mr Hunt said protections including data being deleted after 21 days, no geolocation, onshore storage and encryption were the strongest ever used in Australia with any illegitimate use punishable by jail.
“It is the most basic of data, it’s simply about helping to save your life, to protect your life and to protect the lives of our nurses and doctors and those with whom they come in contact,” he said.
Mr Hunt, who activated powers under the Biosecurity Act to release the app before it could be legislated next month, said the last-minute changes would “diminish” some potential uses but were key to winning Cabinet support to “protect Australians from the spread of coronavirus”.
The app was available download from last night.
When the app is turned on, for it will make a “bluetooth handshake” with other phones that come within 1.5m for more than 15 minutes.
If an app user is diagnosed with coronavirus, they will then have to give state authorities permission to download the handshakes, which can be used to alert others to selfquarantine and get tested.
Mr Hunt said contact tracing would be a key to finding new cases as total new diagnoses dropped to just 117 cases in the past seven days following 297 cases in the prior week.
“We are winning but have not yet won,” he said.
Chief Medical Officer Brendan Murphy said widespread community uptake of the app would be a key for him to convince National Cabinet that Australia had the world’s best public-health response system, which was a critical measure needed to roll back social distancing measures. The Government has publicly aimed for about 40 per cent uptake.