The Australian Federation of Travel Agents (AFTA) is supporting the government’s call to all Australians to download the COVIDSafe app, saying the facilitation of more efficient contact tracing via the app may lead to a faster way for the country to get back to a normal way of life and this could include the lifting of travel restrictions.
“The COVIDSafe app is designed to help find close contacts of COVID-19 cases and is believed to speed up the current manual process of finding people who have been in close contact with someone with COVID-19. What this enables the government to do is make contact with people more quickly with the hope to slow the spread of the virus.
If the app is successful and gets a large acceptance, we may find that Australia can return to normal life more quickly, and this includes the return of travel.
“While we do understand it is a personal choice to download the app, AFTA supports the government via this measure if its application brings forward the date of travel restrictions being lifted,” said Jayson Westbury, AFTA CEO.
“What we all want for Australians is the return to normal life and what we want for the travel industry is for people to have the freedom to travel and it seems to us that this app may be a step in the right direction to achieve both of these outcomes, as such we support the downloading of this app.”
Specific details released by the federal government about the app can be found by Clicking Here.
AFTA encourages all involved in the travel industry to take a look at the app, make their own decision about its security aspects and we hope support the country by downloading it. It may also be a good idea to consider reference to the app in some form to travel agency clients in any COVID19 updates provided to them.
AFTA acknowledges that the downloading of the COVIDSafe app is totally voluntary and respects the opinion and choice of everyone to make this decision to be involved.”