The adoption of contact tracing applications of COVID-19 by European governments

Abstract

Contact tracing can be defined as the identification and the monitoring of each person who has been in contact with an infected person. However, the effectiveness of manual contact tracing is hindered by low responsiveness, limited data processing, respondent omissions or the inability to identify individuals in a crowd. Faced with these limitations, research on digital contact tracing has been carried out. Digital contact tracing, especially smartphone contact tracing apps, has progressively appeared as a solution to slow the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. Such a technological solution allows to track, in real-time, a massive number of (potentially) infected individuals within a given population. Despite high acceptability rates among the population and positive evaluations regarding its effectiveness, the implementation of these digital tracing applications has raised many technological and political questions. By conducting a thematic analysis, this research identifies the technological and policy issues with regard to digital tracing in three European countries.

Health Care Students’ Knowledge of and Attitudes, Beliefs, and Practices Toward the French COVID-19 App: Cross-sectional Questionnaire Study

“…Several smartphone apps have been developed worldwide to automatically and rapidly trace contacts in real time. Across all continents more than 45 apps are currently used [ 6 ] and several states are planning to launch such apps [ 7 ]. The general functioning of these apps is that each mobile device running the app keeps track of other mobile devices running the app that it comes in to close contact with.…”

“…The effectiveness of the StopCovid app must be framed in the specific French context: the testing strategy was and is still unclear with limited testing capacities, tracing was not always possible, and self-quarantining was voluntary and not always followed [ 16 ]. Furthermore, three sources of risk have been identified in the StopCovid app in terms of security and data protection: (1) the hacking of the central database, (2) the reporting of fictitious or unverified cases of infection, and (3) the increased vulnerability of the smartphones themselves caused by the activation of Bluetooth [ 7 ].…”

“…The majority of documents reporting the real uptake of contact tracing apps are national statistics without a scientific and theoretical background. Other studies are critical viewpoints arguing on the ethical, technical, political, and scientific impact of contact tracing apps on society [ 2 , 7 , 9 , 28 , 29 ].…”

“…Concerning critical viewpoints and opinion papers, they describe the public debate on privacy concerns due to the sensitive nature of the collected data. In particular, several researchers have argued that the adoption of contact tracing apps could lead to the economic exploitation of private data and might create a mass electronic surveillance system [ 7 ]. European governments have largely debated on the use of these apps, and ethical guidelines to develop and diffuse them have also been formulated [ 28 ].…”

COVIDTAS COVID-19 Tracing App Scale—An Evaluation Framework

“…From literature, it is also seen that specific policy and technology measures can help alleviate and minimize these concerns. This is best illustrated by the approach taken by Germany, where data privacy was built into the contact tracing application while also providing decentralized storage of data, thereby minimizing the loss or misuse of largescale data [35]. Similarly, by employing geo fencing instead of GPS tracking, Hong Kong has managed to address concerns of governments tracking its citizens to a great extent.…”