New Exposure Sites Smartphone Alert Scales Back Contact Tracing Efforts

Contact tracing across New South Wales will be scaled down as COVID-19 vaccination rates rise.

Health authorities will be relying instead more heavily on the Service NSW app which will notify users who have visited a COVID exposure site.

The new alert function will prompt an automatic notification via a person’s smartphones when a venue they have checked into becomes a site of concern.

The Sydney Briefing

Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovation chairwoman Jane Holton has told Nine it's a great idea and will be available next month.

"We know that technology has a huge capacity to speed things up for us and the great thing is i think people are now being really great at using that phone as they go into a venue"

- Jane Holton

Customer Service Minister Victor Dominello said the Service NSW app updates will become the go-to-tool as the state learns to live with COVID-19.

The new applications will also free up NSW Health workers from investigating who has been at a venue at a certain time when a COVID-19 positive case visited.

The app update will be available in late September.

Meantime, Health officials have issued alerts with case numbers rising in Auburn, Blacktown, Greenacre, Guildford, Merrylands, Punchbowl and Liverpool.

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