There are some pretty grand claims being made for the CovidCard’s ability to keep NZ out of lockdown- sure - it might have a role to play, but think of this last event. It was 9-10 days from infection to diagnosis for the first case. The CovidCard is only

useful after diagnosis. Contact tracers were very effective in identifying and isolating at risk contacts. Might the card have sped the identification of contacts? Possibly, assuming that the tech works as planned, and is used compliantly - to quite high specs. There is also the

chance that it might over burden the contact tracing effort by identifying too many people as clinically relevant contacts. We have to remember that everything about our pandemic response is evidence based and evolving. There simply isn’t an evidence base that the Card will

materially improve our response.

And the maths the advocates use is wacky - “lockdown cost AKL $75 m per day therefore the $100m price tag of CovidCard is trivial” just doesn’t stack up & assumes the card could prevent a lockdown when the virus has been in circulation for 2

weeks before detection.