Around 50 countries used digital contact tracing during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. Anyone who had been in close proximity to someone who tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 ( typically for 15 minutes or more ) would be notified as long as both people had downloaded the contact-tracing app on their devices.
In that first year, digital contact tracing received a lot of media attention and criticism. Many people were concerned that the technology gave governments and technology firms even more power over people’s lives than they already do. Others deemed the apps a failure after public health officials encountered issues with their implementation.
The data reveal a different story three years later.
The United Kingdom collected data to evaluate the app’s efficacy and successfully integrated a digital contact-tracing app with other public health initiatives and programs. Several analyses now demonstrate that the app saved thousands of lives despite the difficulties of introducing a new technology during an emergency and its low uptake. Additionally, it is now more obvious that many of the issues faced elsewhere had to do with integrating a technology from the twenty-first century into what are largely twentieth-century public health infrastructures, rather than with the technology itself.
Digital contact tracing’s past, present, and future
National and international health authorities do not currently fund digital contact tracing. Additionally, they do not include it in pandemic preparedness