Digital contact-tracing during the Covid-19 pandemic: An analysis of newspaper coverage in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland

Amann, Julia; Sleigh, Joanna; Vayena, Effy

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0246524

Cited by 70 publications

(52 citation statements)

References 34 publications

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“…Technology utilization in contact tracing is referred to as digital contact tracing, and it implies the incorporation of technologies, such as mobile technologies, Bluetooth, location services, and QR codes (Amann et al 2021 ), to name a few, in tracking the infected people and notifying those who might have contacted them that they are prone to contagion.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

RETRACTED ARTICLE: Hybrid harmony search algorithm for social network contact tracing of COVID-19

2021

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The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) was first reported in December 2019 in Wuhan, China, and then moved to almost every country showing an unprecedented outbreak. The world health organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic. Since then, millions of people were infected, and millions have lost their lives all around the globe. By the end of 2020, effective vaccines that could prevent the fast spread of the disease started to loom on the horizon. Nevertheless, isolation, social distancing, face masks, and quarantine are the best-known measures, in the time being, to fight the pandemic. On the other hand, contact tracing is an effective procedure in tracking infections and saving others’ lives. In this paper, we devise a new approach using a hybrid harmony search (HHS) algorithm that casts the problem of finding strongly connected components (SCCs) to contact tracing. This new approach is named as hybrid harmony search contact tracing (HHS-CT) algorithm. The hybridization is achieved by integrating the stochastic hill climbing into the operators' design of the harmony search algorithm. The HHS-CT algorithm is compared to other existing algorithms of finding SCCs in directed graphs, where it showed its superiority over these algorithms. The devised approach provides a 77.18% enhancement in terms of run time and an exceptional average error rate of 1.7% compared to the other existing algorithms of finding SCCs.

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Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

RETRACTED ARTICLE: Hybrid harmony search algorithm for social network contact tracing of COVID-19

2021

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“…The best policies and parameters based on this reasoning seek to minimize false negatives first, as these will result in further untracked community spread. These strategies, however, will likely result in a high number of false positives due to prioritization of high-sensitivity, low-specificity methods [27][28][29].…”

Section: App Parameterization Using Epidemiological Data or Disease And User Characteristicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Contact Tracing Apps: Lessons Learned on Privacy, Autonomy, and the Need for Detailed and Thoughtful Implementation

Hogan¹,

Macedo²,

Macha³

et al. 2021

JMIR Med Inform

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The global and national response to the COVID-19 pandemic has been inadequate due to a collective lack of preparation and a shortage of available tools for responding to a large-scale pandemic. By applying lessons learned to create better preventative methods and speedier interventions, the harm of a future pandemic may be dramatically reduced. One potential measure is the widespread use of contact tracing apps. While such apps were designed to combat the COVID-19 pandemic, the time scale in which these apps were deployed proved a significant barrier to efficacy. Many companies and governments sprinted to deploy contact tracing apps that were not properly vetted for performance, privacy, or security issues. The hasty development of incomplete contact tracing apps undermined public trust and negatively influenced perceptions of app efficacy. As a result, many of these apps had poor voluntary public uptake, which greatly decreased the apps’ efficacy. Now, with lessons learned from this pandemic, groups can better design and test apps in preparation for the future. In this viewpoint, we outline common strategies employed for contact tracing apps, detail the successes and shortcomings of several prominent apps, and describe lessons learned that may be used to shape effective contact tracing apps for the present and future. Future app designers can keep these lessons in mind to create a version that is suitable for their local culture, especially with regard to local attitudes toward privacy-utility tradeoffs during public health crises.

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“…Moreover, analyses of early DPT implementations, for example in Australia, suggest that technical aspects (eg, battery consumption, the need for apps to run in the foreground [21]) as well as persistent misconceptions [22,23] also play roles in user decisions and may hinder wide adoption. Therefore, privacy and trust deliberations have steered many of the academic [24] and public [25] debates as well as design decisions [26,27] related to DPT.…”

Section: Implementation Challenges Of Dptmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For example, higher monthly household income or being a nonsmoker were associated with higher SwissCovid app uptake, whereas older age, lack of trust in health authorities, or having a non-Swiss nationality correlated with a lower uptake. Furthermore, early media coverage of SwissCovid [25], as well as a systematic review [38], unearthed some organizational challenges for DPT implementation. This is not completely surprising given the novelty and complexity of the intervention.…”

Section: Known Challenges To the Implementation Of Dptmentioning

confidence: 99%

Challenges for Nontechnical Implementation of Digital Proximity Tracing During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Media Analysis of the SwissCovid App

Wyl¹

2021

JMIR Mhealth Uhealth

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Background Several countries have released digital proximity tracing (DPT) apps to complement manual contact tracing for combatting the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. DPT aims to notify app users about proximity exposures to persons infected with SARS-CoV-2 so that they can self-quarantine. The success of DPT apps depends on user acceptance and the embedding of DPT into the pandemic mitigation strategy. Objective By searching for media articles published during the first 3 months after DPT launch, the implementation of DPT in Switzerland was evaluated to inform similar undertakings in other countries. The second aim of the study was to create a link between reported DPT implementation challenges and normalization process theory for planning and optimizing complex digital health interventions, which can provide useful guidance for decision-making in DPT design and implementation. Methods A Swiss media database was searched for articles on the Swiss DPT app (SwissCovid) published in German or French between July 4 and October 3, 2020. In a structured process, topics were extracted and clustered manually from articles that were deemed pertinent. Extracted topics were mapped to four NPT constructs, which reflected the flow of intervention development from planning, stakeholder onboarding, and execution to critical appraisal. Coherence constructs describe sense-making by stakeholders, cognitive participation constructs reflect participants’ efforts to create engagement with the intervention, collective actions refer to intervention execution and joint stakeholder efforts to make the intervention work, and reflexive monitoring refers to collective risk-benefit appraisals to create improvements. Results Out of 94 articles deemed pertinent and selected for closer inspection, 38 provided unique information on implementation challenges. Five challenge areas were identified: communication challenges, challenges for DPT to interface with other processes, fear of resource competition with established pandemic mitigation measures, unclear DPT effectiveness, and obstacles to greater user coverage and compliance. Specifically, several articles mentioned unclear DPT benefits to affect commitment and to raise fears among different health system actors regarding resource competition. Moreover, media reports indicated process interface challenges such as delays or unclear responsibilities in the notification cascade, as well as misunderstandings and unmet communication needs from health system actors. Finally, reports suggested misaligned incentives, not only for app usage by the public but also for process engagement by other actors in the app notification cascade. NPT provided a well-fitting framework to contextualize the different DPT implementation challenges and to highlight improvement strategies, namely a better alignment of stakeholder incentives, or stakeholder-specific communication to address their concerns about DPT. Conclusions Early experiences from one of the first adopters of DPT indicate that nontechnical implementation challenges may affect the effectiveness of DPT. The NPT analysis provides a novel perspective on DPT implementation and stresses the need for stakeholder inclusion in development and operationalization.

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Digital contact-tracing during the Covid-19 pandemic: An analysis of newspaper coverage in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland

Cited by 70 publications

References 34 publications

RETRACTED ARTICLE: Hybrid harmony search algorithm for social network contact tracing of COVID-19

RETRACTED ARTICLE: Hybrid harmony search algorithm for social network contact tracing of COVID-19

Contact Tracing Apps: Lessons Learned on Privacy, Autonomy, and the Need for Detailed and Thoughtful Implementation

Challenges for Nontechnical Implementation of Digital Proximity Tracing During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Media Analysis of the SwissCovid App

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