Experts call to end QR code check-ins

[MikePal]

I see the defunct QR code system is now being dumped in other countries...time for Canada to wake up and follow suit.

With the Omicron variant spreading more easily than Delta, using a less sensitive definition for ‘close contact’ renders the contact tracing operation pointless. Covid is spreading far beyond the scope of the system set up to track it – so why bother keeping the inconvenience in place?

Australia’s QR-check-in system is once again coming under scrutiny. The Victorian and New South Wales governments continue to insist that most venues force people to register their arrival via the QR system despite criticism mounting on its usefulness.

As positive cases rise into the thousands, an impracticable number of people have become ‘close contacts’, essentially breaking the functionality of the system as it did in the UK.


In an attempt to mitigate this impending failure of procedure, an emergency National Cabinet meeting re-defined ‘close contact’ to require someone to be in close proximity with a confirmed case for more than four hours. Only then is a person notified and required to isolate for seven days and have a rapid antigen test on day six.

While this reduces the load on the QR system, it also invalidates the purpose of its existence.

New South Wales re-introduced the QR-check-in system (after previously dropping it) under pressure from political rivals and community fear. The result has been a great deal of frustration as people receive constant updates while going about their lives.

Bizarrely, and one might argue entirely nonsensically, the New South Wales Minister for Trade Stuart Ayres has defended the system, arguing that QR-check-ins were about ‘informing the community about where the [Covid] cases were’ – even when ‘the system was not triggering a contact-tracing response’.