The federal government “gave up” on the COVID Alert app months ago, terminating support for the contact tracing report system due to its “low uptake,” Newfoundland and Labrador’s health minister said. “The federal government gave up on COVID Alerts app some time ago, several months before Christmas,” Dr. John Haggie said in a press conference on Wednesday, following a question on whether the government has abandoned sending COVID Alert codes to people who tested positive for COVID-19. “They’ve stopped supporting it and they stopped updating their dashboard. The uptake was so low that the effort to maintain those sites was unreasonable given the fact it was yielding so little,” he said. The app requires an infected person to proactively send out an alert to others nearby via Bluetooth using a one-time code obtained from the provincial health authorities. An exposure is recorded only when the user is within 2 metres …