Contact Tracing News
Contact Tracing News
Contact tracing news publishes the latest announcements focused on deploying innovative digital solutions to identify, track, and alert individuals of potential disease outbreaks. Additionally, contact tracing news covers how governments use digital technologies to influence and control population activities.
Digital Contact Tracing programs integrate smartphones, databases, and digital applications to detect when individuals may have been infected with the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus and could be infectious.
Digital Contact Tracing News
August 21, 2020 - Contact tracing apps were supposed to help us keep the virus in check. Why don’t any of them seem to actually work?
August 19, 2020 - Colleges across the USA are testing contact-tracing apps, hoping that tech-savvy students already accustomed to sharing so much of their life online will embrace the digital tool as densely populated campuses try to reopen.
August 18, 2020 - Testing New Contact Tracing Approaches in a Pandemic, HBR audio.
August 14, 2020 - 13 States Make Contact Tracing Data Public. Here's What They're Learning.
August 10, 2020 - COVID-19 apps are getting bad press, but two of the most promising programs say there is still an important role for them in pandemic response.
August 7, 2020 - Coronavirus Cases Are Surging. The Contact Tracing Workforce Is Not.
August 6, 2020 - Compike GmbH develops and sells innovative tracking & tracing solutions based on AutoID and sensor technologies for a wide range of industries.
August 3, 2020 - England’s contact-tracing system needs to improve within weeks to avoid a second wave when schools reopen in September 2020, a study found.
August 3, 2020 - More than 400 public health students from 22 Florida universities have helped the state with contact tracing. They call those who have tested positive for the coronavirus, then ask them detailed questions about their interactions to track possible spread.
August 1, 2020 - Louisiana contact tracing stymied as 73 percent of people who answer don’t share contacts.
July 31, 2020 - Inadequate testing and protracted delays in producing results have crippled tracking and hampered efforts to contain major outbreaks, says the NYTimes.
July 29, 2020 - The Protect Texas Together app for UT-Austin students, faculty, and staff that will help individuals track their symptoms each day and — based on those symptoms — indicate whether they are ..... 'cleared to come to campus.'
July 28, 2020 - A new letter in Family Practice, published by Oxford University Press concluded saying 'while real-time symptom collection through an app seems to be an attractive method to screen for potential infections, the actual value proposed in the study does not appear to perform well in a primary care population.' This means, COVID-19 prediction models based on user-generated symptom tracking through an app.... offers minimal value when making primary care decisions and could increase the number of patients being misdiagnosed as not having COVID-19 disease.
July 25, 2020 - “The key strength of South Korea’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic is its ability to do a thorough epidemiology investigation on every patient,” said Jung Ki-suck, a former CDC director, referring to the detailed public health tracing conducted by officials.
July 21, 2020 - Study: More than 1 in 5 U.S. homes, housing about one-quarter of all Americans, lack sufficient space and plumbing facilities to comply with recommendations to isolate or quarantine to limit the household spread of COVID-19 disease.
July 18, 2020 - Merced County officials have abandoned the contact-tracing effort. They have not attempted to conduct contact tracing for several weeks. Kristyn Sullivan, Merced County’s supervising epidemiologist, said the county is now only doing case investigations — reaching out to infected people to tell them to quarantine but not asking about their close contacts or the places they’ve been recent. CalMatters reached out to 27 California counties to ask about their extent of contact tracing. Merced was the only one that confirmed in June that it was no longer conducting it at all.
July 18, 2020 - The recent increase in reported COVID-19 cases has strained the ability of Houston and Harris County’s health departments to investigate infected residents and find each person whom they could have exposed to the virus.
July 17, 2020 - The U.S. CDC reported a large contact tracing study demonstrated that high-risk household and hospital contacts did not develop an infection if their exposure to a case-patient started 6 days or more after the case patient’s illness onset (Cheng et al., 2020).
July 16, 2020 - Investigators found that time is of the essence when it comes to testing and tracing, which ideally work in tandem. When 4 out of 5 symptomatic people are tested and self-isolate within 1 day of symptoms appearing, the reproduction number should drop from 1.2 to 1.0. Quick contract tracing can further lower that number to 0.8.
July 15, 2020 - Rockefeller Foundation National Covid-19 Testing and Tracing Action Plan published.
July 13, 2020 - NY's governor tweeted says he is issuing an emergency health order: Out-of-state travelers from designated high-COVID states must provide their contact information upon arrival. If you fail to provide it, you will receive a summons with a $2,000 fine.
July 11, 2020 - The Virginia Department of Health announced it is now reporting aggregated information related to COVID-19 contact tracing and has 1,200 contact tracers across 35 health districts across the Commonwealth.
July 10, 2020 - MIT reports 8 million people, 14 alerts: why some COVID-19 apps are staying silent. Critics have rounded on contact tracing apps in France and Australia for sending out almost no virus notifications. Both France and Australia shunned the model put forward by Google and Apple—where data is kept on the user’s phone to maintain privacy—in favor of a centralized approach, where user information is sent to remote servers.
July 9, 2020 - Combatting COVID while protecting privacy: The Public Health Emergency Privacy Act (PHEPA).
July 8, 2020 - Coronavirus Containment Corps Act Will Boost the Country's Capacity to Trace and Prevent COVID-19; Necessary Component of Containing the Virus & Reviving Our Economy.
July 7, 2020 - Contact tracing is not the foundation of Florida’s strategy to fight the coronavirus pandemic, Gov. Ron DeSantis said. “I’ve already greenlighted $138 million for the department of health to support not just contact tracing but other personnel. Another problem that you’ve seen is typically the younger folks aren’t cooperating with contact tracers,” he said.
July 7, 2020 - The number of contact tracers in San Diego County is approaching what experts say is needed. They typically take 10 to 15 calls a day. The county tracks the percentage of cases they are able to begin investigating within 24 hours. If the percentage dips below 70%, that's a trigger indicating the contact tracing system is overwhelmed. Late last week, the trigger was hit, and on Monday the investigation rate fell to 57%.
July 6, 2020 - After criticism from the service industry, Anchorage Mayor Ethan Berkowitz on Tuesday explained his decision to name establishments, mostly bars, where there was COVID-19 exposure. Berkowitz said the city would prefer to privately notify people who were at an establishment where they could have been exposed to the virus. But last week, the city reported its contact tracing ability was maxed out.
July 3, 2020 - The Los Angeles County Restaurant Protocols (updated 4 times since June 28) requires restaurants to collect customer contact information, “if practicable in the normal course of business operation, either at time of reservation booking or on-site to allow for contact tracing should this be required.”
July 2, 2020 - An NYC suburb is subpoenaing partygoers who won't cooperate with coronavirus contact tracers, and it shows the legal measures authorities could take to contain outbreaks.
July 2, 2020 - Contact Tracing for Native Americans in Rural Arizona. Identifying high-risk patients who would benefit from early intervention became our top priority. Our tracing team went from asking, “Where have you been?” to asking, “Who are your grandparents?” We perform rapid testing of newly identified contacts, and a team of clinicians visits people who have tested positive as often as every day.
July 1, 2020 - The US Department of Justice, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Federal Trade Commission announced they are partnering to alert the public of emerging threats to steal money and sensitive information through contact tracing scams.
June 30, 2020 - The US Department of Justice, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Federal Trade Commission announced they are partnering to alert the public of emerging threats to steal money and sensitive information through contact tracing scams. Scammers may send text messages or emails with fake links, or call people pretending to be contact tracers.
June 26, 2020 - British cybersecurity company VTS, in partnership with several tech firms, is rolling out the COVI-PASS, which is a “digital health passport” that will contain your “relevant health information." In May 2020, VST signed with the owner of COVI-PASS, Circle Pass Enterprises to integrate VST’s VCode into the biometric RFID-enabled “passports” which can be accessed via mobile phone or a key fob that will flash colored lights to denote if an individual is to be denied entry to public locations. According to Twitter posts, VST now has a direct partnership with the UK government and has secured contracts to deploy its technology in 15 countries, including Italy, Portugal, France, India, the USA, Canada, Sweden, Spain, South Africa, Mexico, United Arab Emirates, and the Netherlands.
June 25, 2020 - CMS issued updated guidance that unless provided otherwise, other services included on the Medicare telehealth services list must be furnished using, at a minimum, audio and video equipment permitting two-way, real-time interactive communication between the patient and distant site physician or practitioner.
June 25, 2020 - People who test positive for COVID-19 are contacted by NHS Test and Trace by email, text message, or phone call, and will get advice via the Test and Trace website or from a contact tracer over the phone. But there are cases such as those linked to care homes, prisons, homeless hostels or schools, that are more complex to contact trace and are referred to PHE health protection teams
June 23, 2020 - Official figures just released by the NHS in the UK suggest Test and Trace were unable to trace 33% of those who tested positive (and thus their contacts, too) between 28 May and 3 June 2020.
June 21, 2020 - The NYTimes reports that New York City has hired 3,000 contact tracers, but the initial data indicates that only 35% of those infected with coronavirus are giving contact tracers the info they need.
June 17, 2020 - France24 reported France's digital privacy approach differs from Germany, Italy, and other EU countries, which are Bluetooth based, which stores contact tracing data on individual smartphones only. France's "StopCovid" app launched on June 2nd and about 1.5 million people have activated it - roughly 2% of the French population.
June 17, 2020 - A new lawsuit seeks to stop coronavirus contact tracing in Texas. “There is no means for any Texan to opt-out of this surveillance, as others will be asked to report on everyone with whom they have been in the presence of, without regard to the privacy rights of those who do not want to be surveilled,” said the lawsuit that was filed in federal court.
June 16, 2020 - If combined with moderate physical distancing measures, self-isolation and contact tracing would be more likely to achieve control of SARS-CoV-2 transmissions, reported a study published in The Lancet.
June 15, 2020 - When asked if they planned to download a contact-tracing app, an overwhelming majority — 71% — answered no. The data was gathered from an online survey of just over 2,000 people in the USA, collected on June 1, 2020, by polling company Opinion Matters on behalf of the security company Avira.
June 10, 2020 - In Australia, meanwhile, things were even worse. The country’s Covidsafe app launched in April and got far greater adoption—6 million downloads in a country of 25 million. And yet it had even less of an impact: in the state of Victoria, it failed to identify a single contact that hadn’t already been uncovered by manual tracers.
June 9, 2020 - Apple has updated its own COVID-19 iOS app and website with new features to allow users to anonymously share info, including their age, the number of existing health conditions, symptoms, potential exposure risks, and the state in which they’re located.
June 8, 2020 - Singapore government is expanding the TraceTogether Program to include a stand-alone device called the TraceTogether Token. It will function in the same way the app does and uses Bluetooth signals to record other nearby TraceTogether devices. In terms of privacy safeguards, the statement by the Smart Nation Office added that the TraceTogether Token has no GPS and has no Internet or cellular connectivity. The data cannot be pulled from the device unless the user physically hands in the device to the Ministry of Health contact tracers, if and when he/she is confirmed to be infected with COVID-19.
June 8, 2020 - Google Maps starts warning travelers about coronavirus restrictions and mass transit crowding. If the destination is across country borders, Maps will alert users to testing checkpoints along the way and any travel restrictions. These pushes are available for travelers between Canada, Mexico, and the USA.
June 4, 2020 - Hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers will be asked to disclose personal information this month as part of the city’s COVID-19 tracing effort. But elected officials, advocates, and privacy experts argue the de Blasio administration’s unwillingness to specify how privacy will be protected will limit the tracing effort's reach and potentially prolong the need for strict lockdown measures. NYC City Hall said data will not be shared with law enforcement but declined to elaborate further, saying, even though the effort is already underway, “many facets of the technological side are still developing.”
June 4, 2020 - The new wave of software products allows employers to direct their workers to get a Covid-19 test, clear them to return to work, track their symptoms, and trace the contacts of anyone who tests positive for the coronavirus, reported Statnews.
May 26, 2020 - A new report our analysis of 50 COVID-19-related apps, including their use and their access to personally identifiable information, to ensure that the right to privacy and civil liberties are protected. A troubling discovery is that only 16 of the 50 apps indicate that the user’s data will be made anonymous, encrypted, and secured and will be transmitted online and reported only in an aggregated format.
May 26, 2020 - The app development team Switzerland's coronavirus digital-contact-tracing app SwissCovid announced it has become the 1st to launch a solution on the technology offered by Apple and Google.
May 22, 2020 - California Connected will see 10,000 public health workers reach out to people who test positive for COVID-19 and enable access to free confidential testing and medical advice. They'll also offer testing services to people who have been in close contact with those who tested positive. Texts and calls will come in on phones under the caller ID "CA COVID Team," as will emails.
May 21, 2020 - New York City Health + Hospitals (H+H) begun their contact tracing program last week, with 500 tracers onboarded. The move for H+H to take the lead on this program was significant since it deviated from the longstanding practice of the city Department of Health taking the lead.
May 21, 2020 - Governor Larry Hogan today announced that Maryland’s statewide contact tracing operation across all 24 of the state’s jurisdictions will be fully operational. The Maryland Department of Information Technology and the Maryland Department of Health (MDH) partnered to develop COVID Link, a state-of-the-art data management platform, to facilitate the state’s contact tracing partnership with local officials.
May 20, 2020 - Apple and Google announced their Exposure Notifications Technology became available to public health agencies on both iOS and Android. 'What we’ve built is not an app—rather public health agencies will incorporate the API into their own apps that people install.'
May 20, 2020 - As the COVID-19 disease pandemic has escalated the health privacy debates, US lawmakers are trying to pass new legislation. The Wicker and Blumenthal bills both try to fill the gaps not covered by HIPAA — but they do so differently, says STAT news.
May 20, 2020 - A Frisco, Texas-based company has won a $295.3 million state contract to track down Texans potentially infected with the coronavirus. MTX Group Inc. won the 27-month contract in a whirlwind bidding process, beating out 10 mostly big-name corporations, such as IBM, AT&T Global Business Services, and Accenture LLP.
May 18, 2020 - The Southern Nevada Health District announced when close contacts are identified, they are notified by the Health District and provided information on the need to self-quarantine. All identified contacts also have the opportunity to enroll in the Health District’s symptom monitoring mobile app. Contacts log in daily to report whether they are experiencing signs or symptoms of COVID-19. If anyone reports signs or symptoms, the Health District is alerted and can arrange for testing. To ensure confidentiality, patients will be asked to verify their identity on the Health District’s secure portal prior to being given information about their test results.
May 18, 2020 - UK Cabinet Office minister, Michael Gove said the track and trace scheme would be ready to launch nationwide by the end of May 2020, with “just over 17,000” contact tracers already hired. The NHS’s digital arm, NHSX, has developed its own coronavirus tracking app, which will hold data centrally, instead of opting for an alternative from Google and Apple that operates in a decentralized way.
May 14, 2020 - India is aggressively pushing a state-backed contact tracing app Aarogya Setu, or “Health Bridge,” to fight the spread of COVID-19, raising fears that it is on its way to Chinese-style methods of high tech social control. The Indian app also uses GPS location data to augment the information gathered via Bluetooth and build a centralized database of the spread of the infection—an approach avoided by most countries for privacy reasons.
May 13, 2020 - South Korea to boost coronavirus tracing privacy amid fears of a backlash against people who attend nightclubs.
May 11, 2020 - Nearly 38% of Icelanders are using Rakning C-19, which launched in early April. It tracks users’ GPS data to compile a record of where they have been, allowing investigators—with permission—to look at whether those with a positive diagnosis are potentially spreading the disease.
May 5, 2020 - A mobile app launched during March 2020, can now predict geographical hotspots of COVID-19 disease incidence up to 1-week in advance of the public.
May 4, 2020 - Google and Apple announced a ban on GPS location data from contact-tracing apps that rely on their technology. In effect, this decision forces states to choose between tracking encounters using Bluetooth or collecting location data. Apple and Google also said they will allow only one app per country to use the contact system, to avoid fragmentation, and encourage wider adoption. The companies said they would, however, support countries that opt for a state or regional approach, and that U.S. states will be allowed to use the system.
April 27, 2020 - Andy Slavitt, former director of CMS and Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a former FDA chief says the US Congress needs to devote funding to help states track down people who have been exposed to the coronavirus.
April 24, 2020 - Israel’s Knesset Suspends COVID-19 Cellphone Surveillance. The Health Ministry launched a phone application HaMagen which allows for the “identification of contacts between diagnosed patients and people who came in contact with them in the 14 days prior to the patient's diagnosis of the disease.
April 24, 2020 - The WHO said 'At this point in the pandemic, there is not enough evidence about the effectiveness of antibody-mediated immunity to guarantee the accuracy of an “immunity passport” or “risk-free certificate.” People who assume that they are immune to a second infection because they have received a positive test result may ignore public health advice. The use of such certificates may, therefore, increase the risks of continued transmission.'
April 24, 2020 - Netcompany and the Danish National Board of Digitisation the broad national emergency applications are designed for use by both the Danish health authorities and citizens, to support coronavirus efforts. COVIDmeter – Monitoring the Prevalence of COVID-19. COVIDmeter will collect information from citizens about disease symptoms in relation to COVID-19. Users will be encouraged to fill out a digital questionnaire about their health on a weekly basis, allowing authorities to assess the development of the epidemic.
April 22, 2020 - Utah Gov. Gary Herbert announced the launch of a similar voluntary app, called Healthy Together. If an individual test positive, public health officials will be able to access a list of contacts and past locations. The app—which was designed by the social network startup Twenty—relies on a combination of GPS, WiFi, IP address, cellular location data, and Bluetooth to identify contacts. It also requests access to phone contacts.
April 21, 2020 - US Senators propose using state-based Immunization Registries to track the spread of nCV within defined populations who may share similar levels of exposure, geography, and risk factors to determine who may and may not be immune. Employment and social interaction rules can be dynamically adjusted to benefit the employee, workplace productivity, public health, and stability while containing the spread of disease.
April 21, 2020 - Draganfly Inc. announced the first-ever series of U.S. ‘pandemic drone’ test flights in Westport, Connecticut, considered a COVID-19 ‘hotspot’, to identify social distancing and detect symptoms presented by the virus, in an effort to keep the community safe.
April 21, 2020 - Scientists and researchers from more than 25 countries are urging governments not to abuse contract tracing technology to spy on their people. The rift has opened up over a German-led initiative, called Pan-European Privacy-Preserving Proximity Tracing (PEPP-PT), which has been criticized for being too centralized and thus prone to governmental mission creep. The academics said that contact tracing apps that use automated Bluetooth tracing are far more privacy-preserving than apps that collect location data in a central store.
April 18, 2020 - Digital Herd Immunity arises because contact-tracing protocols based on smartphone capabilities can lead to a highly efficient quarantining of infected population members and thus the extinguishing of nascent epidemics. When the disease characteristics are favorable and smartphone usage is high enough, the population is in this immune phase.
April 16, 2020 - In a new set of guidelines, the European Commission said that the 'public trust is paramount for the system to work because the apps are most effective when many people use them.'
April 16, 2020 - The Israeli government tests 4D radar imaging to detect coronavirus symptoms. The sensors are suitable for placement in homes, hospitals, factories, public transportation hubs, and border crossings.
April 15, 2020 - Digital Travel Tokens - The Chief of Moscow’s Department of Information Technologies Eduard Lysenko said "The system of issuing [digital permits] is an unprecedented one. Permits can be requested on the Moscow government’s website, on the phone, and via a text message.
April 14, 2020 - AI-based solutions - A clinical team in Boston has reported being able to monitor a COVID-19 patient remotely, thanks to a device developed at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) that can monitor a patient’s breathing, movement and sleep patterns using wireless signals.
April 10, 2020 - Geo-based identification - Apple and Google said in dual statements they will launch a comprehensive solution that includes application programming interfaces and operating system-level technology to assist in enabling contact-tracing.
April 7, 2020 - Gov. Doug Burgum and the North Dakota Department of Health (NDDoH) in partnership with ProudCrowd, creators of the popular Bison Tracker app, launched a free mobile app, Care19, to help slow the spread of COVID-19 in North Dakota.
April 2, 2020 - Digital map data sharing - Google started sharing public county and state “community mobility reports,” which show how people’s movements among grocery stores, parks, workplaces, and residential homes have increased or reduced, compared with their normal baseline movements.
February 11, 2020 - Hangzhou City, China took the lead in launching health codes, using the “red, yellow and green” three-color two-dimensional code as a digital health certificate. Residents and people who come to Hangzhou can simply pick up nails or Alipay to receive the green code. Passing by code, red-code, and yellow code needs to be isolated according to regulations and health checks. "Health code is a digital health assessment certificate, based on real data, by citizens or reworks personnel through online declaration, after the background review, you can generate a personal QR code, as an individual in the region An electronic voucher for entry and exit is used for one declaration, which is common in all regions.
Non-Digital Contact Tracing News
June 17, 2020 - California Hits Up Libraries and Tax Offices To Recruit 20,000 New Disease Detectives.
June 4, 2020 - The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield told the US Congress that the country needs between 30,000 and 100,000 people working on contact tracing in order to help contain the next wave of the coronavirus.
May 31, 2020 - 'There was no shortage of contact tracers by the time of sustained community transmission, and PHE contacted over 5,000 people as part of its contact tracing during the containment phase. We believe that this activity delayed the peak of the pandemic by around a month and enabled the NHS to prepare more fully.'
May 29, 2020 - Contact tracing could help avoid another lockdown. Can it work in the U.S.?
May 26, 2020 - Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced that $56 million will fund to go expand contact-tracing programs in Chicago, a city of 8.8 million residents. Cook County, which includes Chicago, has confirmed 2,889 fatalities related to COVID-19 disease during 2020.
May 25, 2020 - The Italian government announced intentions to create an army of social distancing staff saying it will recruit 60,000 people to monitor their friend's and neighbors’ activities and make sure they are adhering to social distancing policies.
May 21, 2020 - Detective, nurse, confidant: Virus tracers play many roles, reports the AP.
May 18, 2020 - Life as a Covid-19 contact tracer: sleuthing, stress, and veering off-script.
May 11, 2020 - A new Coursera class developed by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health is now available to train contact tracers on the principles of the public health strategy many consider critical for slowing the spread of COVID-19. The free six-hour course is open to anyone, but taking and passing it will be a requirement for thousands of contact tracers being hired by the state of New York to fight the pandemic.
May 8, 2020 - Frontier Airlines said anyone with a temperature of 100.4 degrees Fahrenheit or higher will be denied boarding.
May 8, 2020 - NYC Mayor De Blasio Strips Control of Virus Tracing From Health Department.
May 8, 2020 - The mayor of Austin, Texas issued an order for restaurants to track and report certain patrons to the Public Health Department.
May 7, 2020 - Ventura County, CA discusses the launch of an innovative contact-tracing program in a Youtube video.
April 30, 2020 - New York's Program Expected to Have 6,400 to 17,000 Tracers Statewide Depending on Projected Number of Cases.
April 28, 2020 - Anita Kurian, assistant director of the Communicable Disease Division with San Antonio Metro Health (SAMH), said on April 28, 2020, the first objective is to identify as many positive (SARS-CoV-2) cases as possible. Next, they work to isolate and place those individuals in quarantine, while at the same time conducting the contact-tracing process, investigating all the people who may have been exposed by an infected patient, and place them in quarantine as well. Kurian said they have 17 investigators on staff with SAMH, and a corps of 70 volunteers to assist in the process, in southern Texas.
April 20, 2020 - The CDC is funding 650 health workers at state health departments to supplement more than 600 CDC staff already in place, according to director Dr. Robert Redfield. The goal is to ensure every community can do enough testing and contact tracing to prevent new outbreaks from occurring.
April 14, 2020 - When shoppers visit Valley County in Montana, a new health department regulation requires certain people to wear an arm-band to clarify their coronavirus infection status, reported the Montana Daily Gazette.
April 3, 2020 - Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker announced an initiative April 3 to accelerate the state’s efforts to contain the spread of COVID-19 by dramatically scaling up the state’s capacity for contact tracing through a new collaboration with Partners In Health (PIH) in which Harvard Medical School faculty will play key leadership roles.
