Contact tracing with digital assistance in Taiwan's COVID-19 outbreak response.
Int J Infect Dis
; 101: 348-352, 2020 Dec.
Article
in English
| MEDLINE | ID: covidwho-816546
ABSTRACT
AIM:
Comprehensive case investigation and contact tracing are crucial to prevent community spread of COVID-19. We demonstrated a utility of using traditional contact tracing measures supplemented with symptom tracking and contact management system to assist public health workers with high efficiency.METHODS:
A centralized contact tracing system was developed to support data linkage, cross-jurisdictional coordination, and follow-up of contacts' health status. We illustrated the process of how digital tools support contact tracing and management of COVID-19 cases and measured the timeliness from case detection to contact monitoring to evaluate system performance.RESULTS:
Among the 8051 close contacts of the 487 confirmed cases (16.5 close contacts/case, 95% CI [13.9-19.1]), the median elapsed time from last exposure to quarantine was three days (IQR 1-5). By implementing the approach of self-reporting using automatic text-messages and web-app, the percentage of health status updates from self-reporting increased from 22.5% to 61.5%. The high proportion of secondary cases detected via contact tracing (88%) might reduce the R0 to under one and minimize the impact of local transmission in the community.CONCLUSION:
Comprehensive contact tracing and management with complementary technology would still be a pillar of strategies for containing outbreaks during de-escalation or early in the next wave of COVID-19 pandemic.Keywords
Full text:
Available
Collection:
International databases
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Contact Tracing
/
COVID-19
Type of study:
Cohort study
/
Diagnostic study
/
Experimental Studies
/
Observational study
/
Prognostic study
/
Randomized controlled trials
Limits:
Adolescent
/
Adult
/
Aged
/
Child
/
Child, preschool
/
Female
/
Humans
/
Infant
/
Male
/
Middle aged
Country/Region as subject:
Asia
Language:
English
Journal:
Int J Infect Dis
Journal subject:
Communicable Diseases
Year:
2020
Document Type:
Article
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