COVID-19 contact-tracing smartphone application usage—The New Zealand COVID Tracer experience

Howell, Bronwyn; Potgieter, Petrus H.

doi:10.1016/j.telpol.2022.102386

Cited by 3 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 23 publications

(25 reference statements)

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“…With this detailed knowledge, the two factors, contact rate and transmission probability, embedded in the effective reproductive number can be minimized to forestall the outbreak of an EID such as COVID-19 in a community. Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, digital contact tracing has been proposed and implemented in a variety of nations and regions [5,8,10,11,[13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23]. The implementation of contact tracing in the context of containment measures may vary from time to time, not only due to the transmissibility and severity of dominant COVID-19 variants of concern (VOCs) but also the availability of vaccines and antiviral therapies [24,25].…”

Section: The Needs Of Digital Contact Tracingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The implementation of contact tracing in the context of containment measures may vary from time to time, not only due to the transmissibility and severity of dominant COVID-19 variants of concern (VOCs) but also the availability of vaccines and antiviral therapies [24,25]. Nevertheless, there have been few attempts to examine the details of implementations of digital contact tracing based on empirical cases of efforts to contain COVID-19 outbreaks [14,16,18,19,22].…”

Section: The Needs Of Digital Contact Tracingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, various frameworks and methods for digital contact tracing have been developed [8,10,11,[13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23]. In addition to techniques aimed at enhancing the efficiency of identifying individuals at risk of infection owing to contact with pathogens, we have demonstrated a comprehensive strategy that integrates this information with traditional approaches.…”

Section: Evolution Of Digital Contact Tracing In Taiwanmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Community-Based Digital Contact Tracing of Emerging Infectious Diseases: Design and Implementation Study With Empirical COVID-19 Cases

Wang,

Lin,

Yao

et al. 2023

J Med Internet Res

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Background Contact tracing for containing emerging infectious diseases such as COVID-19 is resource intensive and requires digital transformation to enable timely decision-making. Objective This study demonstrates the design and implementation of digital contact tracing using multimodal health informatics to efficiently collect personal information and contain community outbreaks. The implementation of digital contact tracing was further illustrated by 3 empirical SARS-CoV-2 infection clusters. Methods The implementation in Changhua, Taiwan, served as a demonstration of the multisectoral informatics and connectivity between electronic health systems needed for digital contact tracing. The framework incorporates traditional travel, occupation, contact, and cluster approaches and a dynamic contact process enabled by digital technology. A centralized registry system, accessible only to authorized health personnel, ensures privacy and data security. The efficiency of the digital contact tracing system was evaluated through a field study in Changhua. Results The digital contact tracing system integrates the immigration registry, communicable disease report system, and national health records to provide real-time information about travel, occupation, contact, and clusters for potential contacts and to facilitate a timely assessment of the risk of COVID-19 transmission. The digitalized system allows for informed decision-making regarding quarantine, isolation, and treatment, with a focus on personal privacy. In the first cluster infection, the system monitored 665 contacts and isolated 4 (0.6%) cases; none of the contacts (0/665, 0%) were infected during quarantine. The estimated reproduction number of 0.92 suggests an effective containment strategy for preventing community-acquired outbreak. The system was also used in a cluster investigation involving foreign workers, where none of the 462 contacts (0/462, 0%) tested positive for SARS-CoV-2. Conclusions By integrating the multisectoral database, the contact tracing process can be digitalized to provide the information required for risk assessment and decision-making in a timely manner to contain a community-acquired outbreak when facing the outbreak of emerging infectious disease.

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Section: The Needs Of Digital Contact Tracingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Needs Of Digital Contact Tracingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Evolution Of Digital Contact Tracing In Taiwanmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Community-Based Digital Contact Tracing of Emerging Infectious Diseases: Design and Implementation Study With Empirical COVID-19 Cases

Wang,

Lin,

Yao

et al. 2023

J Med Internet Res

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Digital contact tracing technology in the COVID-19 pandemic: a systematic review

Irwin,

Aisyah,

Rahman

et al. 2024

Health Technol.

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Introduction The COVID-19 pandemic prompted public health teams across the world to emphasize case identification, contact tracing, and isolation in outbreak management strategies. Contact tracing was advanced by global access to mobile phones to develop and implement digital contact tracing (DCT) technology with the objective of increasing the rate of contact tracing while reducing the resources required. Purpose This study aimed to describe the DCT technology used during the COVID-19 pandemic across the world, and to identify differences and similarities between characteristics and uses. Methods This review followed the PRISMA (2020) guidelines for systematic reviews. Literature searches were conducted using Embase, MEDLINE, and PubMed and were restricted to English studies published between 2019 to 2023. Studies were excluded if they did not report findings for DCT during COVID-19, did not provide data for technology characteristics or outcomes, or were a study design listed for exclusion. Results Sixty one studies were included in the review producing results for 147 digital contact tracing technologies across 83 countries. The majority of digital contact tracing (DCT) technologies are government-owned (75.6%), primarily developed for COVID-19 tracing (96.4%). Bluetooth is the most favored technology (70%) used in their development, followed by GPS (30%) and QR codes (22%). Applications are the preferred platform (90.9%), with a few using applets (6.3%) and wearable devices (1.4%). Only 2 DCT technologies have achieved over 100 million downloads or uses (3.1%). Most DCTs fall into the 1–9.99 million downloads range (27.7%) and 10,000–99,999 downloads (20%). The majority of DCTs are voluntarily used by the population (63.6%), while 27.3% are mandated for use. Conclusions Digital contact tracing technologies were developed and implemented globally as a strategy in emergency outbreak management to reduce the spread of disease. This review describes the use of DCT across the world by identifying key features and characteristics that will serve as a lesson learned for improvement of existing DCT technologies for other emergency response outbreak management.

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‘Barely keeping the wheels on the trolley’: A qualitative study of the New Zealand COVID Tracer App

Elers,

Derrett,

Emery

et al. 2024

Social Science & Medicine

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COVID-19 contact-tracing smartphone application usage—The New Zealand COVID Tracer experience

Cited by 3 publications

References 23 publications

Community-Based Digital Contact Tracing of Emerging Infectious Diseases: Design and Implementation Study With Empirical COVID-19 Cases

Community-Based Digital Contact Tracing of Emerging Infectious Diseases: Design and Implementation Study With Empirical COVID-19 Cases

Digital contact tracing technology in the COVID-19 pandemic: a systematic review

‘Barely keeping the wheels on the trolley’: A qualitative study of the New Zealand COVID Tracer App

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