The Covid-19 Delta strain is fast becoming out of control in Australia while the country races to vaccinate the population. I believe the government must move to compliment state and territory tracing efforts by moving from COVIDsafe's OpenTrace technology to the decentralised Exposure Notification system built into all recent versions of iPhone and Android software. The system would notify anyone with an iPhone or Android who was a close contact — potentially days sooner than manual contact tracers.

The COVIDSafe app launched in 2020 but has not been updated for Delta strain conditions. To date, the app has been ineffective at being a useful tool for tracing and alerts. 'Senate Estimates heard in March that the app had not detected any unique close contacts since November last year.' (ABC, 1 Jul 2021) The app cost $6.5 million to build and costs $100,000 a month to maintain. The app has failed at the job to be done.

The Exposure Notification API is a private, decentralised system developed jointly by Apple and Google to detect close contacts while maintaining private and security. It has a proven track record in the UK and New Zealand at complimenting current manual contact tracers struggling to scale with the increase of Delta cases.

People who receive a close contact notification can proactively alert authorities of their status, assist manual tracers and get tested. If they are a positive case, any participating device that was nearby would also be alerted.

The Australian Federal Government (or state governments) must try the alternative, proven system. Manual tracing teams are a finite resource working against the clock, but a wide network of personal devices could help slow the spread while Australia gets vaccinated.