ArticleNature communications2021
Nationwide rollout reveals efficacy of epidemic control through digital contact tracing.
Article in Nature communications, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 16 papers.
What it found
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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.
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Who cites it
16 citing papers in PubMed.
- Transforming a Pandemic Tool Into a Public Health Asset: Modified Delphi Study.JMIR public health and surveillance · 2026Article
- Characteristics Influencing Support for the National Health Service COVID-19 App in England and Wales: Findings From a Longitudinal Survey.Journal of medical Internet research · 2026Article
- The Emergence of AI in Public Health Is Calling for Operational Ethics to Foster Responsible Uses.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2025Article
- Population and contact tracer uptake of New Zealand's QR-code-based digital contact tracing app for COVID-19.Epidemiology and infection · 2024Article
- The epidemiological impact of digital and manual contact tracing on the SARS-CoV-2 epidemic in the Netherlands: Empirical evidence.PLOS digital health · 2023Article
- Feasibility of digital contact tracing in low-income settings - pilot trial for a location-based DCT app.BMC public health · 2023Article
- An open-source digital contact tracing system tailored to haulage.Frontiers in digital health · 2023Article
- Governing digital crisis responses: platform standards and the dilemma of COVID-19 contact tracing.Journal of business economics · 2023Article
- Understanding the impact of digital contact tracing during the COVID-19 pandemic.PLOS digital health · 2022Article
- The German COVID-19 Digital Contact Tracing App: A Socioeconomic Evaluation.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Article
- Modelling effectiveness of COVID-19 pandemic control policies using an Area-based SEIR model with consideration of infection during interzonal travel.Transportation research. Part A, Policy and practice · 2022Article
- Individual-Level Evaluation of the Exposure Notification Cascade in the SwissCovid Digital Proximity Tracing App: Observational Study.JMIR public health and surveillance · 2022Observational
- A Layered Adopter-Structure Model for the Download of COVID-19 Contact Tracing Apps: A System Dynamics Study for mHealth Penetration.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Article
- Beyond legislation and technological design: The importance and implications of institutional trust for privacy issues of digital contact tracing.Frontiers in digital health · 2022Review
- Use of temporal contact graphs to understand the evolution of COVID-19 through contact tracing data.Communications physics · 2022Article
- Nationwide rollout reveals efficacy of epidemic control through digital contact tracing.Nature communications · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
8 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Fuelled by epidemiological studies of SARS-CoV-2, contact tracing by mobile phones has been put to use in many countries. Over a year into the pandemic, we lack conclusive evidence on its effectiveness. To address this gap, we used a unique real world contact data set, collected during the rollout of the first Norwegian contact tracing app in the Spring of 2020. Our dataset involves millions of contacts between 12.5% of the adult population, which enabled us to measure the real-world app performance. The technological tracing efficacy was measured at 80%, and we estimated that at least 11.0% of the discovered close contacts could not have been identified by manual contact tracing. Our results also indicated that digital contact tracing can flag individuals with excessive contacts, which can help contain superspreading related outbreaks. The overall effectiveness of digital tracing depends strongly on app uptake, but significant impact can be achieved for moderate uptake numbers. Used as a supplement to manual tracing and other measures, digital tracing can be instrumental in controlling the pandemic. Our findings can thus help informing public health policies in the coming months.
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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.