The NZ COVID-19 Tracer App

Since Tuesday 19^th May the New Zealand government’s official ‘NZ COVID-19 Tracer’ app has been available for download. This first iteration, though, is little more than the promised sign-up form Jacinda Ardern told us about in early April when she said, “it will help update our national health database with users' contact details.”

Apart from ensuring our details are up-to-date, the other official benefit is that people get used to scanning themselves into premises.

Having available an electronic list of places visited will be a memory aid to assist us in case we test positive, but it will not do much to ‘protect your friends, whānau and community by enabling faster contact tracing’ as the download page states.

The Director of the Centre for Social Data Analytics, Dr Rhema Vaithianathan, tweeted on the night the app became available, “This makes no sense - how does it help moh [Ministry of Health] locate contacts that have visited the same place as the case? Am I missing something here??”

She wasn’t. The app cannot help with locating people who were in the same premises that a person with a COVID-19 positive test visited. The only way to help with that is a register but under Lockdown Level 2 it is only hospitality places that must keep a register.

Think Carefully About Any COVID-19 Tracing App

As one of the tools to fight COVID-19 the NZ government has promised that there will be a contact tracing app available by mid-May. The first iteration they have said, will be in the form of an on-line sign-up form, and could be out by 11th May.

But there has been minimal discussion about the pros and cons of COVID-19 apps. Rather, our fear of the virus and its effect on our world has meant that most people are unquestioningly accepting the necessity of using apps to keep the spread of the virus under control.

However, we need to break away from the fear factor and consider the long-term societal results of any COVID-19 apps. We need to consider possible consequences weighed up against any benefits. We need to not only question the short-term need for contact tracing but think of their long-term use and effect. We need to look at what we are being asked to give up.

Decisions made today about any tracing or tracking apps will have huge implications for our futures.

COVID-19: Tracking and Tracing Apps in NZ

Desperate to stop the spread of COVID-19 and to get the economy going again, the NZ government announced at the end of lockdown level 4 that they will introduce a tracing app within two weeks. That means there will be some type of an app by 11 May (unless they change their mind). The first iteration they have said, will be to just register your contact details with the Ministry of Health.

Covid 19 coronavirus: NZ's own tracing app on way....NZ Herald, 27 April 2020

Little more is known about what the government is planning, so OASIS has gathered together an overview of some of the types of contact tracing and tracking apps that have come to light in the media.

The Aim of Contact Tracing

The aim of a contact tracing app is to be able to alert anyone who has been in contact with an infected person and warn them to isolate themselves. It is not a system that warns anyone of the presence of a person who is infected (as a recent article on Stuff claimed).