With face-to-face teaching gradually being reintroduced to our schools, it’s a good time to join more than 5 million Australians by installing the COVIDSafe app on your phone.

The app can help keep school staff and students safer by making it quicker to contact people who have been exposed to COVID-19 and making it less likely they will pass the virus on to their friends and family.

Installing the COVIDSafe app is not mandatory, but the Department of Education is supporting its use. By automating and streamlining the contact tracing process, it can help the Federal and State Governments lift restrictions sooner.

The app will use Bluetooth to record anyone else with the app installed that you might be in close proximity to. It does not track your location.

If one of these people becomes infected with COVID-19, the state and territory health authorities can use this encrypted data to work out who they need to contact, and to let you know quickly if you could be at risk. The data can only be accessed if someone tests positive, and has agreed to the information on their phone being uploaded.

Find out more about the app and how it works at the Department of Health’s COVIDSafe app page and download the app from the App Store or Google Play.

Video – Coronavirus (COVID-19) – Our path back

Duration – 2:26

Transcript of Coronavirus (COVID-19) – Our path back video.