Complementary Blockchain-Based Privacy Protection for Covid-19 Contact Tracing

ABSTRACT

Fighting any pandemic outbreak begins with health authorities already behind time. They are required to locate, isolate and treat infected individuals while tracking possibly infected ones. In the case of Covid-19, the high reproductive number of the virus necessitates that all contacts of an infected individual be found within the shortest possible time to slow the rate of spreading. This presents multiple challenges because of the highly invasive nature of tracing activities which demand the mobility history of patients. Patients may be unwilling to cooperate or may be unable to communicate if the infection has advanced to the point where critical care is necessary. To speedily locate contacts of an infected individual, we propose using communications data logs from telecommunications operators. We employ a modified directed graph to determine which other individuals have been in close proximity to an infected individual in a specific frame of time. We then generate a contact graph and place it in a secure offline storage platform. We employ Smart Contracts to control access to the data while the blockchain keeps records of the provenance of all data and transactions. We find this method of conducting the contact tracing and protecting the resulting data more secure and pliant to the privacy laws that regulate the handling of sensitive personal data. © 2021 IEEE.