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New figures reveal more than 300 people with corona-virus have the app on their phone and have granted officials permission to sift through their data. However, Victoria's Chief Medical Officer, Prof. Brett Sutton said the information logged by the app provided no information that was not already collected through traditional contact tracing.

"The app has not added a close contact that we haven't found through our very extensive long-form interview that takes an hour or more where we go through every single setting and encounter that people have had.” He said. 

Prof. Sutton argued that because people were not going out and interacting with others, particularly in Melbourne, which was under lockdown.

"We are in policy settings in Victoria where people are just at home with their immediate family so the close contacts that they have will be those family members and will be workplace close contacts. They are not going to large gatherings, they are not standing next to strangers for 15 minutes or more, so the COVIDSafe App is not going to flag those interactions because I don't think those interactions are largely happening.” he added. 

Australian Federal Labor has raised questions about the effectiveness of the app, because the technology has not provided any assistance to the traditional contact tracing approach. (NK/abcaus)