“Reports from Newsroom that not a single contact has been traced with Bluetooth tracing is damning of a Government that’s been having the world’s longest nap between lockdowns," says ACT Leader David Seymour.
“The Government’s NZ COVID Tracer App has barely changed since Bluetooth capability was added in December. Rather than continuous improvement to build functionality, it has simply let the NZ COVID Tracer App slide like every other aspect of the response between lockdowns.
“Ashley Bloomfield’s excuse that none of the 400+ cases are in a demographic likely to use Bluetooth contact tracing beggars belief. What did he mean by that? There appear to be a large number of young people amongst the cases, does he not know they have smart phones?
“The real problem is that contact tracers are reportedly not even asking contacts to upload their Bluetooth data. It’s difficult to imagine how a response could be more incompetent or a Government could be more blasé about the costs they’re putting onto New Zealand.
“Bloomfield’s comment that he’d ‘give contact tracers a nudge’ about using Bluetooth data would be quite funny if the country wasn’t doing two weeks at Alert Level 4. How is it possible that Bluetooth contact tracing was not a major priority when it became clear Delta would outrun manual tracing.
“The Government should have been engaged with the developer to constantly upgrade the App. I get more upgrades on my Instagram App than my NZ COVID Tracer App."