Covid NT: Check In app text failure just the latest absurdity

Territorians deserve more credit for navigating the morass that is government advice on Covid amid surging cases, writes Zizi Averill.

THE Territory has set up one of the most absurd Covid tracking systems, where residents can rely more on the gossip of Facebook groups and frantic text messages than uniform government policy.

Imagine: Your phone dings with an automatic alert.

You’ve been at a Covid exposure site – but there’s no mention where or when.

Your mind switches to Detective mode as you try and deduce the culprit responsible for this surprise exposure alert.

While you may want to know when you were exposed, the Territory Government has decided that’s an irrelevant detail.

Maybe you were exposed during a stroll through an open air weekend market, maybe it was in a hazy late-night out on the dancefloor.

Again, according to the NT Government, that’s an irrelevant detail.

The only thing you are told is to monitor for symptoms — something that the government has been repeating to everyone ad nauseam for nearly two years anyway.

Ms Fyles said on Tuesday the system was simply “not designed” to provide more details in the texts – but shouldn’t this scenario have been anticipated?

Territorians have spent months diligently checking in everywhere we go – including handing over our names, phone numbers, emails, Medicare details and a record of all our movements – for the sake of community health.

Yet, when handed this critical information the government has bungled it.

On Friday Chief Minister Michael Gunner was forced to reveal that zero Covid alerts had been sent for ten days – failing to inform thousands of Territorians about their potential exposures.

Only a day earlier Mr Gunner declared the government had “not walked away from” contact tracing (although leaving emergency alerts in your drafts folder is probably equally as bad).

If your system relies on infected Covid patients texting their close contacts, and your alert system has been dismissed by its users as less than useless – what is the actual contact tracing plan in the Territory?

Territorians are told to check in using this app, but then receive no detail on where they were exposed.

Adding to the insanity is the desperate search for Covid testing kits.

While residents are no longer waiting upwards of 10-days for their results, they are scooping up rapid antigen tests as soon as they hit the shelves.

Only three weeks ago Health Minister Natasha Fyles advised Territorians to treat Covid like a cyclone and prepare an emergency kit ready.

Ms Fyles said free RATs would be given away at the government testing centres, saying “we’ll provide enough so that your family has what is needed”.

Yet when Territorians went out to set up their Covid kits, the shelves were empty and they were told to stop acting like the “worried well” when asking for government supplies.

We’ve spent 18 months listening to warnings of Covid’s deadly impact but now that the virus has arrived we’re told to stop acting like hypochondriacs.

The government promised speed, efficiency and clear communication – instead we’re trapped in this hazy ad hoc system trying to guess if that tickle in our nose is hayfever or a virus that has so far killed 2668 Australians.