ArticleJournal of the Royal Society, Interface2021
Automated contact tracing: a game of big numbers in the time of COVID-19.
Article in Journal of the Royal Society, Interface, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
10 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Comparative effectiveness of contact tracing interventions in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic: a systematic review.European journal of epidemiology · 2023Pooled it
- Automated and partly automated contact tracing: a systematic review to inform the control of COVID-19.The Lancet. Digital health · 2020Pooled it
- Digital contact tracing technologies in epidemics: a rapid review.The Cochrane database of systematic reviews · 2020Pooled it
- Article
- Autobiographical memory in contact tracing: evidence from the COVID-19 pandemic.Frontiers in psychology · 2023Article
- COVID-19 contact-tracing smartphone application usage-The New Zealand COVID Tracer experience.Telecommunications policy · 2022Article
- Digital contact tracing, community uptake, and proximity awareness technology to fight COVID-19: a systematic review.Sustainable cities and society · 2021Article
- Superspreading of airborne pathogens in a heterogeneous world.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- "Hot-spotting" to improve vaccine allocation by harnessing digital contact tracing technology: An application of percolation theory.PloS one · 2021Article
- The Global Emergency of Novel Coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2): An Update of the Current Status and Forecasting.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2020Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
One of the more widely advocated solutions for slowing down the spread of COVID-19 has been automated contact tracing. Since proximity data can be collected by personal mobile devices, the natural proposal has been to use this for automated contact tracing providing a major gain over a manual implementation. In this work, we study the characteristics of voluntary and automated contact tracing and its effectiveness for mapping the spread of a pandemic due to the spread of SARS-CoV-2. We highlight the infrastructure and social structures required for automated contact tracing to work. We display the vulnerabilities of the strategy to inadequate sampling of the population, which results in the inability to sufficiently determine significant contact with infected individuals. Of crucial importance will be the participation of a significant fraction of the population for which we derive a minimum threshold. We conclude that relying largely on automated contact tracing without population-wide participation to contain the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic can be counterproductive and allow the pandemic to spread unchecked. The simultaneous implementation of various mitigation methods along with automated contact tracing is necessary for reaching an optimal solution to contain the pandemic.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.