Contact Tracing

This page collects observations, interpretations, and consequences action about the Contact Tracing as an intervention for SARS-CoV2 in general. Please observe the structure of the page, when you add your content. Please use references where possible. Remember to find the relevant page. For example, if your observation is about transmission routes, please use that page, instead of posting your content here.

Contact Tracing Apps

Some public health groups have developed Apps and other digital tools for Contact Tracing, some dating back to the SARS outbreak (2003). Here is an overview, followed by our usual observations, interpretations, and actions.

Overview of apps

• TraceTogether, developed in Singapore, with recently all coding being published online for the common good.
  • At the writing of this version of the page, over 62000 people have installed the app on their cellphone. For the app to start tracing, the Bluetooth setting on mobile phones has to be turned on. If a user gets infected, the authorities will be able to quickly find out the other users he has been in close contact with, allowing for easier identification of potential cases and helping curb the spread of the virus.

Name	Feature	Developer	Outbreaks
Go.data	Create tailored investigation form, chain of transmission, info can be adapted according to the diseases	GOARN	Ebola, Diphtheria
TraceTogether	used to identify close contacts based on the proximity and duration of an encounter between the two users.	Singapore Gov. and SGUnited	Covid-19
WeTrace	via mobile data, generates a unique QR code per user and traces their timeline, movements, locations, and even other users	Department of Health, the Philippines	Covid-19
Close contact detector	indicate each person’s status: green for people who can leave their homes, yellow for people who need to quarantine themselves at home for seven days, and red for those who need to quarantine themselves at home for 14 days. The app tracks people’s movements. Having contact with people known to be infected or traveling to affected areas changes a person’s status. Only those with a status of green are allowed to enter businesses or to use public transportation or public facilities.	China	Covid-19
Corona 100m	Not specific for contact tracing but informs citizens of known cases within 100 meters of where they are.	South Korea	Covid-19

Obeservations

• Use of a mobile application for Ebola contact tracing and monitoring in northern Sierra Leone: a proof-of-concept study (Danquah et al, BMC, 2019): despite challenges, the study demonstrated that it was possible to implement mobile health (mHealth) in this emergency setting.
  • The app had the benefits of improved data completeness, storage and accuracy, but the challenges of using an app in this setting and epidemic context were substantial.
• Oxford University provides evidence for coronavirus mobile app for instant contact tracing.
  • The Oxford University team has provided European governments, including the UK, with evidence to support the feasibility of developing a contact tracing mobile app that is instant, could be widely deployed and should be implemented with appropriate ethical considerations. The Oxford University team recommends that the mobile application should form part of an integrated coronavirus control strategy that identifies infected people and their recent contacts using digital technology.
  • Visit: http://www.coronavirus-fraser-group.org for the science behind this work.
• Contact Tracing takes more than having tools (paper-based or digital) to find a risk contact. Then the hard work begins, communicating the risk to an individual, convincing them to cooperate, change behavior, change a way of living. So, it is not a one of contact: that too needs to be managed over time. You need to handle contact data in the same secure way as you handle case data. During outbreaks, a data manager is not a luxury but a necessity to have in any outbreak investigation team. For example, the WHO guideline on Ebola contact tracing (2015) describes this well.

Analysis and interpretation

• Anyone who has gone through the painstaking, frustrating process of contact tracing, encountering memory fallacies, wrong phone numbers or addresses, refusal to cooperate, must have thought: "If ever there is a time for Big Brother, it is now. Please help". Digital tools CAN help. Technically, it is no longer a big deal. The key issue popping up, is privacy: a society value that varies in weight across the globe. In the EU, where the older generation still carries scars of a totalitarian regime that meticulously registered individual traits, in order to exterminate large groups based on that registry as a next step, you can imagine that the protection of individual, personal data is paramount. Only a few weeks into the Coronavirus Pandemic, the Dutch parliament voted against the proposal of the EU to use mobile phone provider tracker data, to identify risk areas and populations at risk.