Experts warn that contact-tracing apps are not a solution to the COVID-19 crisis.

The Prime Minister and Federal Government have been pushing hard to get as many people as possible to download Australia’s contract-tracing app, COVIDSafe.

Prime Minster Scott Morrison says that if there is high enough uptake of the app, it would become an excuse to begin letting people out of coronavirus lockdown.

The Government insists that the app can replace, or at least substantially enhance, the labour-intensive work of contact tracing.

But this may not be the case, as the app does not do nearly as much as human contract-tracers do, and there is very little evidence for the efficacy of the new technological approach.

“The lure of automating the painstaking process of contact-tracing is apparent. But to date, no one has demonstrated that it’s possible to do so reliably despite numerous concurrent attempts,” say researchers and academics at the Brookings Institution in the US.

“We worry that contact-tracing apps will serve as vehicles for abuse and disinformation, while providing a false sense of security to justify reopening local and national economies well before it is safe to do so.

“Apps that notify participants of disclosure could, on the margins and in the right conditions, help direct testing resources to those at higher risk. Anything else strikes us as implausible at best, and dangerous at worst.”

Additionally, a survey by local news outlet iTnews has found that 48 per cent of Australians are unwilling to download the app.