Coronavirus: 1 million sign up for Australia’s new contact-tracing app within five hours

Chief medical officer ‘really excited’ by popularity of COVIDSafe – aimed at quickly containing further outbreaks of the virus

More than one million people in Australia have downloaded the government’s new coronavirus contact-tracing app, despite some privacy concerns.

Ministers had hoped one million people would download COVIDSafe within five days of its launch Sunday evening, but it took less than five hours to reach the initial target.

By 6am on Monday morning, 1.13 million Australians had downloaded the app on their mobile phones, according to health minister Greg Hunt.

Chief health officer Damian Murphy he was “really excited” by the early popularity of COVIDSafe – designed to help in the early alerting of people who may have been in contact with anyone who contracts Covid-19.

The government says 40 per cent of Australians – around 10 million people – a need to acquire the app for it to be an effective way of quickly containing any further outbreaks of the virus.

If users of COVIDsafe are diagnosed with the virus, they can upload the app’s encrypted data logs which identify other users who have been in close proximity for 15 minutes or more in the previous three week.

While the early public response to the app exceeded expectations, digital rights advocates have asked for its source code to be made public in order for its full capabilities to be scrutinised.

Privacy campaigners have also warned that any technological surveillance measures should be introduced only in a strictly optional fashion.

The government said use of the app was entirely voluntary and Australia would follow Singapore’s lead in making the source code public “within two weeks” to allay concerns.

Tracking app 'COVIDSafe' released in Australia on April 26, 2020 (Getty Images)

On Sunday prime minister Scott Morrison gave assurances personal privacy would not be compromised by the app. “It’s another tool we need to get back to normal as much as we can,” he said.

“No other government agency can use this information, no-one in the Commonwealth government at all. And in state authorities, only the health officer can use it. Not the police, not the welfare people, nowhere else. Just the health officer.”

Australia has made encouraging progress on containing the spread of Covid-19, with analysts crediting the population’s strong observance of social distancing guidelines. So far, 83 people have died from the disease in Australia out of 6,711 cases, according to government figures.

The release of COVIDSafe comes as the University of Oxford professor in charge of a new NHS-backed contact tracing app said it could be ready for roll-out in the UK within weeks.

Professor Christophe Fraser, from Oxford University’s Big Data Institute,​ said 60 per cent of the population would have to use the app for it to act, on its own, an effective way of stopping any resurgence of the coronavirus.

He told the BBC the proportion “may be a bit smaller if there are other interventions going on, which we hope there will be – social distancing, large community testing, and indeed manual contact tracing”.