Potential reduction in transmission of COVID-19 by digital contact tracing systems: a modelling study.
Math Med Biol
; 39(2): 156-168, 2022 06 11.
Article
in English
| MEDLINE | ID: covidwho-1740880
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND:
Digital tools are being developed to support contact tracing as part of the global effort to control the spread of COVID-19. These include smartphone apps, Bluetooth-based proximity detection, location tracking and automatic exposure notification features. Evidence on the effectiveness of alternative approaches to digital contact tracing is so far limited.METHODS:
We use an age-structured branching process model of the transmission of COVID-19 in different settings to estimate the potential of manual contact tracing and digital tracing systems to help control the epidemic. We investigate the effect of the uptake rate and proportion of contacts recorded by the digital system on key model outputs the effective reproduction number, the mean outbreak size after 30 days and the probability of elimination.RESULTS:
Effective manual contact tracing can reduce the effective reproduction number from 2.4 to around 1.5. The addition of a digital tracing system with a high uptake rate over 75% could further reduce the effective reproduction number to around 1.1. Fully automated digital tracing without manual contact tracing is predicted to be much less effective.CONCLUSIONS:
For digital tracing systems to make a significant contribution to the control of COVID-19, they need be designed in close conjunction with public health agencies to support and complement manual contact tracing by trained professionals.Keywords
Full text:
Available
Collection:
International databases
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Epidemics
/
COVID-19
Type of study:
Diagnostic study
/
Observational study
/
Prognostic study
Limits:
Humans
Language:
English
Journal:
Math Med Biol
Journal subject:
Biology
/
Medicine
Year:
2022
Document Type:
Article
Affiliation country:
Imammb
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