The federal government's COVIDSafe app has been scrapped, but little change is expected given that the app did not do much. 

The $21 million COVIDSafe platform was designed to trace close contacts of people who tested positive for COVID-19.

Australia’s former LNP federal government touted the app as critical to reopening the economy, but problems plagued it from the start.

The system used bluetooth signals transmitted at regular intervals to make contact with other users nearby, and when a person tested positive for COVID-19, state and territory authorities could request access to the phone log to see who else may have been infected.

But with few people actively using the app, it was less effective than expected, and was guaranteed to work for those who left it open.

COVIDSafe only worked about a quarter of the time or less on locked iPhone, communications between locked Androids and iPhones was poor, and the app contained bugs that had the potential to limit its core function – particularly at big events, where it would have been most useful. 

When the more infectious COVID-19 Delta variant emerged, the app became “very useless” for tracking cases, experts said. 

New figures released by the federal health department show just 17 close contacts that had not already been picked up by manual contact tracers were identified in over two years of the app’s operation. 

The app spotted just two unique COVID cases.

Over 6 million signed up to the app in its first few weeks, and that number had grown to just  7.9 million registrations at the time of the app’s decommissioning. 

Less than 800 people contented to their positive test results being used, meaning the app had very little to work with. 

The previous federal government signed contracts worth nearly $10 million for work on the app until the end of 2021, but then refused to join Apple and Google's joint contract tracing system, which was adopted by more than 50 jurisdictions around the world. 

COVIDSafe had a monthly operating price tag of $100,000, and a total price of $21 million. 

Of that figure, $10 million was for the development of the app, $7 million was spent on advertising and marketing, $2.1 million on upkeep and more than $2 million on staff.

Users are now being asked to uninstall COVIDSafe.