Australia rolls out major phase in widespread coronavirus testing

SYDNEY - Healthcare workers will be among the first groups of people subjected to widespread COVID-19 testing, with the aim of detecting asymptomatic carriers of the disease, according to Australian health authorities on Monday.

"A high priority would be health workers because they are at the front line, they are the people probably most likely to see cases," Australia's Chief Medical Officer Brendan Murphy told local media.

"The consequences of health and age workers getting asymptomatic infection would be higher. We've had talks with leading professional bodies ... and they support what we call sentinel testing," The Australian newspaper quoted Murphy as saying. He was referring to a form of sample testing that uses data to detect virus spread in a community.

"You can't test everybody. There are 300,000 nurses in Australia," he said.

Referring to ongoing concerns about the privacy of personal data stored in a new mobile software application used to track the spread of the COVID-19, the chief medical officer also provided assurances that only state and territory health officials will ever be able to access the data.

"The Commonwealth has no access to any of the data. We have locked this down so completely, so thoroughly with the bio security bill and legislation that is coming, the only people who can access the data are the state and territory health officials," Murphy said.

"All we are told is how many people are updating it."