26 September 2023

COVIDSafe app captures closer contacts

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The Digital Transformation Agency (DTA) has released an update to the COVIDSafe app to improve Bluetooth communication across a wide range of mobile devices.

The Agency said the communication and range finding protocol, ‘Herald’, provided contact tracing apps with regular and accurate proximity information that helped them to be highly effective.

“Incorporating Herald will further improve COVIDSafe’s performance, particularly when the app is running in the background on iOS devices,” DTA said.

“Herald has been designed to provide the same level of Android and iOS backward compatibility as COVIDSafe currently does,” it said.

“This ensures COVIDSafe will continue to be available across the wide range of mobile devices used by the Australian community.”

DTA said Herald supported the current COVIDSafe operating model, which was designed to meet Australia’s contact tracing needs and ensured Health Officials were at the core of response efforts.

The Agency said testing of Herald in COVIDSafe demonstrated a near 100 per cent detection of close contacts in the foreground and background across iOS and Android devices.

It said Herald would give COVIDSafe an ‘excellent’ rating for encounter detection on iPhone to iPhone, and iPhone to Android digital handshakes.

“Herald is a VMware-originated open source project, it is part of VMware’s ongoing contribution towards the Linux Foundation Public Health initiative,” DTA said.

“The initiative aims to use open source technologies to help public health authorities across the world combat COVID-19,” it said.

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