For Publishers
DiscoveryMetadataPeer reviewHostingPublishing
For Researchers
JoinPublishReviewCollect
Register
Blog
About
Search
Advanced search
My ScienceOpen
Search
For Publishers
For Researchers
Blog
About
16
views
65
references
 Top references
cited by
29
    
0 reviews
 Review
0
comments
 Comment
0
recommends
+1 Recommend
1 collections
    0
    shares
      189
      similar
       All similar
      • Record: found
      • Abstract: found
      • Article: not found

      Digital contact tracing, community uptake, and proximity awareness technology to fight COVID-19: a systematic review

      research-article

      Read this article at

      ScienceOpenPublisherPMC
      Bookmark
          There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.

          Abstract

          Digital contact tracing provides an expeditious and comprehensive way to collect and analyze data on people’s proximity, location, movement, and health status. However, this technique raises concerns about data privacy and its overall effectiveness. This paper contributes to this debate as it provides a systematic review of digital contact tracing studies between January 1, 2020, and March 31, 2021. Following the PRISMA protocol for systematic reviews and the CHEERS statement for quality assessment, 580 papers were initially screened, and 19 papers were included in a qualitative synthesis. We add to the current literature in three ways. First, we evaluate whether digital contact tracing can mitigate COVID-19 by either reducing the effective reproductive number or the infected cases. Second, we study whether digital is more effective than manual contact tracing. Third, we analyze how proximity/location awareness technologies affect data privacy and population participation. We also discuss proximity/location accuracy problems arising when these technologies are applied in different built environments (i.e., home, transport, mall, park). This review provides a strong rationale for using digital contact tracing under specific requirements. Outcomes may inform current digital contact tracing implementation efforts worldwide regarding the potential benefits, technical limitations, and trade-offs between effectiveness and privacy.

          Related collections

          Most cited references65

          • Record: found
          • Abstract: found
          • Article: not found

          Estimating the effects of non-pharmaceutical interventions on COVID-19 in Europe

          Seth Flaxman, Swapnil Mishra, Axel Gandy … (2020)
          Following the detection of the new coronavirus1 severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) and its spread outside of China, Europe has experienced large epidemics of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). In response, many European countries have implemented non-pharmaceutical interventions, such as the closure of schools and national lockdowns. Here we study the effect of major interventions across 11 European countries for the period from the start of the COVID-19 epidemics in February 2020 until 4 May 2020, when lockdowns started to be lifted. Our model calculates backwards from observed deaths to estimate transmission that occurred several weeks previously, allowing for the time lag between infection and death. We use partial pooling of information between countries, with both individual and shared effects on the time-varying reproduction number (Rt). Pooling allows for more information to be used, helps to overcome idiosyncrasies in the data and enables more-timely estimates. Our model relies on fixed estimates of some epidemiological parameters (such as the infection fatality rate), does not include importation or subnational variation and assumes that changes in Rt are an immediate response to interventions rather than gradual changes in behaviour. Amidst the ongoing pandemic, we rely on death data that are incomplete, show systematic biases in reporting and are subject to future consolidation. We estimate that-for all of the countries we consider here-current interventions have been sufficient to drive Rt below 1 (probability Rt < 1.0 is greater than 99%) and achieve control of the epidemic. We estimate that across all 11 countries combined, between 12 and 15 million individuals were infected with SARS-CoV-2 up to 4 May 2020, representing between 3.2% and 4.0% of the population. Our results show that major non-pharmaceutical interventions-and lockdowns in particular-have had a large effect on reducing transmission. Continued intervention should be considered to keep transmission of SARS-CoV-2 under control.
          Article 0 comments Cited 1455 times – based on 0 reviews     Review now
            Bookmark
            • Record: found
            • Abstract: found
            • Article: found
            Is Open Access

            Feasibility of controlling COVID-19 outbreaks by isolation of cases and contacts

            Joel Hellewell, Sam Abbott, Amy Gimma … (2020)
            Summary Background Isolation of cases and contact tracing is used to control outbreaks of infectious diseases, and has been used for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Whether this strategy will achieve control depends on characteristics of both the pathogen and the response. Here we use a mathematical model to assess if isolation and contact tracing are able to control onwards transmission from imported cases of COVID-19. Methods We developed a stochastic transmission model, parameterised to the COVID-19 outbreak. We used the model to quantify the potential effectiveness of contact tracing and isolation of cases at controlling a severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)-like pathogen. We considered scenarios that varied in the number of initial cases, the basic reproduction number (R 0), the delay from symptom onset to isolation, the probability that contacts were traced, the proportion of transmission that occurred before symptom onset, and the proportion of subclinical infections. We assumed isolation prevented all further transmission in the model. Outbreaks were deemed controlled if transmission ended within 12 weeks or before 5000 cases in total. We measured the success of controlling outbreaks using isolation and contact tracing, and quantified the weekly maximum number of cases traced to measure feasibility of public health effort. Findings Simulated outbreaks starting with five initial cases, an R 0 of 1·5, and 0% transmission before symptom onset could be controlled even with low contact tracing probability; however, the probability of controlling an outbreak decreased with the number of initial cases, when R 0 was 2·5 or 3·5 and with more transmission before symptom onset. Across different initial numbers of cases, the majority of scenarios with an R 0 of 1·5 were controllable with less than 50% of contacts successfully traced. To control the majority of outbreaks, for R 0 of 2·5 more than 70% of contacts had to be traced, and for an R 0 of 3·5 more than 90% of contacts had to be traced. The delay between symptom onset and isolation had the largest role in determining whether an outbreak was controllable when R 0 was 1·5. For R 0 values of 2·5 or 3·5, if there were 40 initial cases, contact tracing and isolation were only potentially feasible when less than 1% of transmission occurred before symptom onset. Interpretation In most scenarios, highly effective contact tracing and case isolation is enough to control a new outbreak of COVID-19 within 3 months. The probability of control decreases with long delays from symptom onset to isolation, fewer cases ascertained by contact tracing, and increasing transmission before symptoms. This model can be modified to reflect updated transmission characteristics and more specific definitions of outbreak control to assess the potential success of local response efforts. Funding Wellcome Trust, Global Challenges Research Fund, and Health Data Research UK.
            Article 0 comments Cited 1150 times – based on 0 reviews     Review now
              Bookmark
              • Record: found
              • Abstract: found
              • Article: found
              Is Open Access

              Estimating the asymptomatic proportion of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) cases on board the Diamond Princess cruise ship, Yokohama, Japan, 2020

              Kenji Mizumoto, Katsushi Kagaya, Alexander Zarebski … (2020)
              On 5 February 2020, in Yokohama, Japan, a cruise ship hosting 3,711 people underwent a 2-week quarantine after a former passenger was found with COVID-19 post-disembarking. As at 20 February, 634 persons on board tested positive for the causative virus. We conducted statistical modelling to derive the delay-adjusted asymptomatic proportion of infections, along with the infections’ timeline. The estimated asymptomatic proportion was 17.9% (95% credible interval (CrI): 15.5–20.2%). Most infections occurred before the quarantine start.
              Article 0 comments Cited 1084 times – based on 0 reviews     Review now
                Bookmark
                All references

                Author and article information

                Journal
                Journal ID (nlm-ta): Sustain Cities Soc
                Journal ID (iso-abbrev): Sustain Cities Soc
                Title: Sustainable Cities and Society
                Publisher: Elsevier Ltd.
                ISSN (Print): 2210-6707
                ISSN (Electronic): 2210-6715
                Publication date PMC-release: 12 May 2021
                Publication date (Print): August 2021
                Publication date (Electronic): 12 May 2021
                Volume: 71
                Page: 102995
                Affiliations
                [a ]School of Geography and Planning, Department of Urban and Regional Planning, No 135, Xingang Xi Road, Guangzhou, Haizhu, 510275, China
                [b ]Guangdong Key Laboratory for Urbanization and Geo-simulation, Sun Yat-sen University, No 135, Xingang Xi Road, Guangzhou, Haizhu, 510275, China
                Author notes
                [* ]Corresponding author at: School of Geography and Planning, Department of Urban and Regional Planning, No 135, Xingang Xi Road, Guangzhou, Haizhu, 510275, China.
                Article
                Publisher Item ID: S2210-6707(21)00281-X Publisher ID: 102995
                DOI: 10.1016/j.scs.2021.102995
                PMC ID: 8114870
                PubMed ID: 34002124
                SO-VID: 169c4763-9566-45b8-b50c-7786fa9a1588
                Copyright © © 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
                License:

                Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active.

                History
                Date received : 20 January 2021
                Date revision received : 2 April 2021
                Date accepted : 2 May 2021
                Categories
                Subject: Article

                Keywords: digital contact tracing,manual contact tracing,sars-cov-2,location-awareness,proximity awareness,smartphone
                Data availability:
                Keywords: digital contact tracing, manual contact tracing, sars-cov-2, location-awareness, proximity awareness, smartphone

                Comments

                Comment on this article

                scite_

                Similar content189

                See all similar

                Cited by28

                See all cited by

                Most referenced authors7,510

                See all reference authors