Australia will launch a contact-tracing mobile app later on April 26 to boost its efforts to combat the coronavirus outbreak.

“It’s an incredibly important next step in helping us maintain the success that we’ve been able to achieve,” Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton told Sky News Australia. “We don’t want society locked down. We want people to get back to work, we want our economy to grow again.”

The app is based on Singapore’s TraceTogether, and records the “Bluetooth handshake” a mobile phone makes with others in close proximity. If users catch the virus, they can then share that contact data with health authorities to speed up tracing.

A broader testing regime and the contact-tracing app are seen as necessary for Australia to consider relaxing restrictions on the economy. Dutton said all the requisite privacy protections will be in place. The government has stressed the data will only be used by health officials and won’t be accessible by police or other federal or state agencies.

The nation had 6,677 confirmed Covid-19 cases - up just 112 from a week ago. It has had 79 deaths.

 - Bloomberg