The federal government has updated COVIDSafe, Australia's COVID-19 contact tracing app, this time touting the changes will significantly improve its capability.
The app will incorporate a new Herald Bluetooth protocol, Minister for Government Services Stuart Robert said, explaining that this would offer "unparalleled app-level Bluetooth performance and contribute to better identification of potential close contacts".
A statement from Robert and Health Minister Greg Hunt said the Digital Transformation Agency (DTA) has been working with Apple and Google to incorporate the protocol into the COVIDSafe app. The statement also provided COVIDSafe Bluetooth encounter logging results, which demonstrated "excellent" status for all tests.
See also: Even with COVID-19 spread near zero, chief scientist says Australia's systems are ready[1]
The DTA said in May that 179 functional tests[2] were conducted for the Apple iOS and Google Android versions of the COVIDSafe app prior to release and that requirements were met.
"All tests satisfied the baseline design requirements," the DTA said at the time. "Performance tests were also conducted against the technical requirements."
In June, however, it was revealed the DTA knew COVIDSafe had severe flaws[3]. This was despite the app being sent out for public use[4] on 26 April 2020. The revelation followed research that showed locked iPhones were practically useless[5] when it came to logging encounters through COVIDSafe.
This time around, the app is reporting that even locked iPhone to locked iPhone logs were recording "excellent" performance.
"The protocol provides for excellent performance of all encounter logging under all phone conditions and will continue to work on more than 96% of Apple and Android phones," the ministers' statement said.
The code for the update will be made