Evaluating How Smartphone Contact Tracing Technology Can Reduce the Spread of Infectious Diseases: The Case of COVID-19

Abstract

Detecting and controlling the diffusion of infectious diseases such as COVID-19 is crucial to managing epidemics. One common measure taken to contain or reduce diffusion is to detect infected individuals and trace their prior contacts so as to then selectively isolate any individuals likely to have been infected. These prior contacts can be traced using mobile devices such as smartphones or smartwatches, which can continuously collect the location and contacts of their owners by using their embedded localisation and communications technologies, such as GPS, Cellular networks, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth. This paper evaluates the effectiveness of these technologies and determines the impact of contact tracing precision on the spread and control of infectious diseases. To this end, we have created an epidemic model that we used to evaluate the efficiency and cost (number of people quarantined) of the measures to be taken, depending on the smartphone contact tracing technologies used. Our results show that in order to be effective for the COVID-19 disease, the contact tracing technology must be precise, contacts must be traced quickly, and a significant percentage of the population must use the smartphone contact tracing application. These strict requirements make smartphone-based contact tracing rather ineffective at containing the spread of the infection during the first outbreak of the virus. However, considering a second wave, where a portion of the population will have gained immunity, or in combination with some other more lenient measures, smartphone-based contact tracing could be extremely useful.

Technical Perspectives of Contact-Tracing Applications on Wearables for COVID-19 Control

“…For example, when a tagged user A emits a wireless signal, the receiving users in proximity could first estimate the distance based on a number of available characteristics as presented in [14]. In case the distance is lower than a predefined threshold, e.g., the value is lower than 2 m, as the safety threshold adopted by many research papers [2], [15], [16], then the receiving user will store the anonymized ID from user tagged user and the corresponding timestamps. Therefore, a ledger of neighboring users could be created per node.…”

“…Many mobile health companies, hospital healthcare centers, and remote diagnostics startups have proved a high ability to respond promptly during a real epidemic. They have motivated the researchers worldwide to find efficient technology-based complementary solutions for disease prevention and control during the past half-year [2]- [5]. It is essential to note that none of the technological solutions are meant to replace the mitigation measures recommended by epidemiologists and exerts from the medical domain, yet technological advances can complement the existing manual ones and assist in implementing social distancing measures as described in [6].…”

“…A wireless contact-tracing application aims to determine the probability of being infected with COVID-19 in a fully automated or semi-automated manner and based on the wireless signals [2]. Contact tracing in the wireless world is also known as proximity tracing or user proximity detection or proximity tracking [5].…”

“…Such as self-isolation or quarantine for infected persons and persons with a high likelihood to cross their paths with someone infected. Relevant and timely actions additionally include avoiding close contacts, wearing masks, and following proper hand hygiene for persons with a low-tomoderate likelihood to contact the disease [2], [5], [7].…”

IEF2C: A novel AI-powered framework for suspected COVID-19 patient detection and contact tracing in smart cities

“…The existing contact tracing apps use various communication technologies such as cellular networks, GPS, Bluetooth, WiFi. An epidemic model has been designed to evaluate the efficient contact tracing app and those communication technologies have been applied for simulation purposes [39]. The contact tracing app has some attributes such as data management, system architecture, privacy, proximity, security estimation and vulnerability [40].…”