Automated Contact Tracing: a game of big numbers in the time of COVID-19 (original) (raw)
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SSRN Electronic Journal
Contact Tracing is considered as the first and the most effective step towards containing an outbreak, as resources for mass testing and large quantity of vaccines are highly unlikely available for immediate utilization. Effective contact tracing can allow societies to reopen from lock-down even before availability of vaccines. The objective of mobile contact tracing is to speed up the manual interview based contact tracing process for containing an outbreak efficiently and quickly. In this article, we throw light on some of the issues and challenges pertaining to the adoption of mobile contact tracing solutions for fighting COVID-19. In essence, we proposed an Evaluation framework for mobile contact tracing solutions to determine their usability, feasibility, scalability and effectiveness. We evaluate some of the already proposed contact tracing solutions in light of our proposed framework. Furthermore, we present possible attacks that can be launched against contact tracing solutions along with their necessary countermeasures to thwart any possibility of such attacks.
Quantifying SARS-CoV-2 transmission suggests epidemic control with digital contact tracing
2020
The newly emergent human virus SARS-CoV-2 is resulting in high fatality rates and incapacitated health systems. Preventing further transmission is a priority. We analysed key parameters of epidemic spread to estimate the contribution of different transmission routes and determine requirements for case isolation and contact-tracing needed to stop the epidemic. We conclude that viral spread is too fast to be contained by manual contact tracing, but could be controlled if this process was faster, more efficient and happened at scale. A contact-tracing App which builds a memory of proximity contacts and immediately notifies contacts of positive cases can achieve epidemic control if used by enough people. By targeting recommendations to only those at risk, epidemics could be contained without need for mass quarantines (‘lock-downs’) that are harmful to society. We discuss the ethical requirements for an intervention of this kind.
A Review of Contact Tracing Approaches for Controlling COVID-19 Pandemic
2021
The year 2020 will always be in the history of mankind due to the deadly outbreak of COVID-19. Many people are already infected around the world due to the spreading of this novel coronavirus. The virus mainly replicates through close contacts, so there are no other alternatives than to keep social distance, use proper safety gear, and maintain self-quarantine. As a result, the growth of the virus has changed the lifestyle of every individual to a great extent. It is also compelling the Governments to dictate strict lock-downs of the highly affected areas, impose work-from-home approaches where applicable, enforce strict social distancing standards, and so on. Some of the countries are also using smartphonebased applications for contact tracing to track the possibly infected individuals. However, there is a lot of discussion around the world about these contact tracing applications and also about their architecture, attribute, data privacy, and so on. In this paper, we have provided...
Tracing Contacts to Control the COVID-19 Pandemic
ArXiv, 2020
The control of the COVID-19 pandemic requires a considerable reduction of contacts mostly achieved by imposing movement control up to the level of enforced quarantine. This has lead to a collapse of substantial parts of the economy. Carriers of the disease are infectious roughly 3 days after exposure to the virus. First symptoms occur later or not at all. As a consequence tracing the contacts of people identified as carriers is essential for controlling the pandemic. This tracing must work everywhere, in particular indoors, where people are closest to each other. Furthermore, it should respect people's privacy. The present paper presents a method to enable a thorough traceability with very little risk on privacy. In our opinion, the latter capabilities are necessary to control the pandemic during a future relaunch of our economy.
Effectiveness modelling of digital contact-tracing solutions for tackling the COVID-19 pandemic
Journal of Navigation
Since the beginning of the coronavirus (COVID-19) global pandemic, digital contact-tracing applications (apps) have been at the centre of attention as a digital tool to enable citizens to monitor their social distancing, which appears to be one of the leading practices for mitigating the spread of airborne infectious diseases. Many countries have been working towards developing suitable digital contact-tracing apps to allow the measurement of the physical distance between citizens and to alert them when contact with an infected individual has occurred. However, the adoption of digital contact-tracing apps has faced several challenges so far, including interoperability between mobile devices and users’ privacy concerns. There is a need to reach a trade-off between the achievable technical performance of new technology, false-positive rates, and social and behavioural factors. This paper reviews a wide range of factors and classifies them into three categories of technical, epidemiolo...
Digital contact tracing for COVID-19: a primer for policymakers
2020
Recent modelling studies have shown that timely isolation of contacts can be effective in reducing the COVID-19 reproduction rate [1]. The epidemiological features of COVID-19 put it in the region where contact tracing is a viable public health strategy but it needs to occur at exceptional speed to control transmission. This need for speed has led policymakers to consider adopting contact tracing apps that enable rapid digital contact tracing. The rapidity and perfect scalability of digital contact tracing make it superior to manual contact tracing for an infection such as COVID-19. However, digital contact tracing has to enable notification of contacts the instant a user becomes positive. Ideally, with a rapid follow-up call by public health officials. A number of contact tracing apps currently deployed – such as the Australian COVIDSafe app – do not allow instantaneous notification and are therefore very limited in their ability to achieve control. Digital tracing apps also requir...
Contact-Tracing Approaches to Fight Covid-19 Pandemic: Limits and Ethical Challenges
2020 IEEE 2nd International Conference on Electronics, Control, Optimization and Computer Science (ICECOCS)
COVID-19 pandemic is the largest worldwide sanitary and economical crisis of modern time. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the new corona virus is spreading rapidly from person to person through contact transmission. To fight the COVID-19 outbreak, a number of strategies have been implemented at the population level, such as social distancing, testing and contact tracing. In this work, we focus on contact tracing, which is considered an effective public health measure to control the spread of this disease by identifying and tracking potential persons who may have been in contact with a COVID-19 infected person. To this end, we review various approaches and existing contact tracing applications used by various governments around the world to monitor and control the spread of this disease. Then, we discuss the limits and ethical issues of such digital contact tracing solutions.
Contact tracing in epidemiology Lessons learnt from COVID
Magna Scientia Advanced Research and Reviews, 2022
Contact tracing is a powerful public health tool used in identifying people that might have been in contact with an infected person to assess the potential of being infected and transmitting the diseases. This review explores the history, implementation, and effects of contact tracing, as a significant public health strategy during the COVID-19 pandemic. The review started by giving a historical summary of contact tracing, then links it to early efforts at disease control for diseases such smallpox and TB. We further examine pre-COVID-19 contact tracing approaches, such as manual and early digital tools employed during past epidemics like Ebola and Zika. While investigating the development of digital innovations—such as Bluetooth-based applications and location data tracking—that were used to improve tracing efforts—the review emphasises the efficacy and problems of conventional manual contact tracing during COVID-19. Notably, we examine the hybrid models that combine manual and digital approaches, proving higher compliance and efficiency. Along with the difficulties countries with less efficient tracing systems—such as the United States and India—the review also includes worldwide case studies showing successful implementations in countries such Taiwan, South Korea, and New Zealand. Emphasising the need of public trust and the effect of the digital divide, it also covers public compliance and social elements affecting involvement in contact tracing programs. In order to strengthen public health preparedness for next pandemics, we offer potential options for contact tracing resilience, arguing for contact systems backed by technological developments and ethical protections. Informing best practices for next epidemiological tactics, this thorough analysis uncovers important insights and lessons learnt from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Contact Tracing Strategies for COVID-19 Prevention and Containment: A Scoping Review
Big Data and Cognitive Computing
Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) spreads rapidly and is easily contracted by individuals who come near infected persons. With this nature and rapid spread of the contagion, different types of research have been conducted to investigate how non-pharmaceutical interventions can be employed to contain and prevent COVID-19. In this review, we analyzed the key elements of digital contact tracing strategies developed for the prevention and containment of the dreaded epidemic since its outbreak. We carried out a scoping review through relevant studies indexed in three databases, namely Google Scholar, PubMed, and ACM Digital Library. Using some carefully defined search terms, a total of 768 articles were identified. The review shows that 86.32% (n = 101) of the works focusing on contact tracing were published in 2020, suggesting there was an increased awareness that year, increased research efforts, and the fact that the pandemic was given a very high priority by most journals. We obser...
PLOS Computational Biology
The spread of COVID-19 caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus has become a worldwide problem with devastating consequences. Here, we implement a comprehensive contact tracing and network analysis to find an optimized quarantine protocol to dismantle the chain of transmission of coronavirus with minimal disruptions to society. We track billions of anonymized GPS human mobility datapoints to monitor the evolution of the contact network of disease transmission before and after mass quarantines. As a consequence of the lockdowns, people’s mobility decreases by 53%, which results in a drastic disintegration of the transmission network by 90%. However, this disintegration did not halt the spreading of the disease. Our analysis indicates that superspreading k-core structures persist in the transmission network to prolong the pandemic. Once the k-cores are identified, an optimized strategy to break the chain of transmission is to quarantine a minimal number of ‘weak links’ with high betweenness cen...