The contentious $21 million COVIDSafe monitoring programme has been scrapped after only two years.
COVIDSafe customers were told to deactivate the software Tuesday night.
COVIDSafe is deactivated. Notification: “The app is no longer utilised for contact tracing.”
This update eliminates app functionality so no data is gathered. This enables COVIDSafe’s decommissioning.
Health Minister Mark Butler closed the contentious app, introduced by Scott Morrison’s administration to track Covid cases once the epidemic struck in early 2020, at the end of July.
Mr. Butler claimed the $21m app only identified two positive Covid cases throughout the epidemic.
This failing app wasted $21 million, he claimed.
‘This is how the last administration used public money.
The previous PM suggested this software would be a “sunscreen” against Covid, but it only wasted government money.
This failing software only discovered two affirmative COVID cases at $10 million each.
When COVIDSafe was originally introduced, critics said a location-tracking software constituted a privacy invasion.
Concerns arose that the gathered data may be accessed or sold.
As limitations lifted and retailers deleted QR check-in codes, most people stopped using the app.
The app’s latest update was roughly a year ago.