Associate Head of Computing and Mathematics at Wagga's CSU campus, Tanveer Zia, specialises in technology security.

In his opinion, the app has failed its original objective of assisting with widely tracing close contacts in virus outbreaks.

Dr Zia said technological issues, combined with privacy concerns and a lack of public awareness, could have contributed.

"For an app that cost millions of dollars, it needs to be doing more," he said. "There was also not enough public awareness done, so I think we will find a lot of people downloaded it but didn't activate it."

Ritesh Chugh, senior lecturer in Information and Communication Technology at CQ University, supported Dr Zia's views, adding it was frustrating for taxpayers in the Riverina to have little confidence in the app.

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"Millions of dollars of taxpayers money appears to have been wasted," he said.

"The agency behind the app introduced the update called Herald, which was meant to have fixed the app in November.

"But the state governments are focusing on their own solutions, such as the QR Code, which in itself shows the lack of trust."

Dr Chugh added that an interim report delivered by a Senate committee in December found the app had failed to deliver on initial promises.

"The $5.24 million COVIDSafe app has significantly under-delivered on the Prime Minister's promise that the app would enable an opening up of the economy in a COVID safe manner," the report said.

"The app was launched with significant performance issues and has only been of limited effectiveness in its primary function of contact-tracing."

Dr Chugh said while it was unclear if technical issues or a lack of use was behind the app's failure, it was still crucial that people download, activate and keep it on.

On Wednesday, Mr McCormack said he encouraged everyone to continue downloading, registering, and updating the COVIDSafe app.

"It has been designed in conjunction with our public health officials to meet their needs, and it is effective in aiding the work of public health contact tracing teams," he said.

"Public health officials then manage all health aspects including quarantine requirements, tracing efforts and medical services."

Mr McCormack confirmed he still has the app on his own phone.

"NSW has successfully accessed the COVIDSafe app 98 times to identify 80 close contacts, including 17 contacts who were not identified by manual contact tracing," he said.

"In one instance, their access to COVIDSafe App data revealed a previously unrecognised exposure date from a known venue, Mounties. This resulted in the identification of an additional 544 contacts.

"Two people in this group presented for testing and were subsequently confirmed to have COVID-19."

A spokesperson for the Department of Health said each of the states are using it as a part of their contact tracing systems, including Victorian and NSW during the current outbreaks.

"The Department of Health continues to encourage Australians to join the more than 7.28 million people have downloaded and registered for the COVIDSafe app," they said.

"Ongoing upgrades to the technology behind the app, including Bluetooth are also assisting and everyone is encouraged to make sure they have the latest version."