A QR Code–Based Contact Tracing Framework for Sustainable Containment of COVID-19: Evaluation of an Approach to Assist the Return to Normal Activity

We discuss a pandemic management framework using symptom-based quick response (QR) codes to contain the spread of COVID-19. In this approach, symptom-based QR health codes are issued by public health authorities. The codes do not retrieve the location data of the users; instead, two different colors are displayed to differentiate the health status of individuals. The QR codes are officially regarded as electronic certificates of individuals’ health status, and can be used for contact tracing, exposure risk self-triage, self-update of health status, health care appointments, and contact-free psychiatric consultations. This approach can be effectively deployed as a uniform platform interconnecting a variety of responders (eg, individuals, institutions, and public authorities) who are affected by the pandemic, which minimizes the errors of manual operation and the costs of fragmented coordination. At the same time, this approach enhances the promptness, interoperability, credibility, and traceability of containment measures. The proposed approach not only provides a supplemental mechanism for manual control measures but also addresses the partial failures of pandemic management tools in the abovementioned facets. The QR tool has been formally deployed in Fujian, a province located in southeast China that has a population of nearly 40 million people. All individuals aged ≥3 years were officially requested to present their QR code during daily public activities, such as when using public transportation systems, working at institutions, and entering or exiting schools. The deployment of this approach has achieved sizeable containment effects and played remarkable roles in shifting the negative gross domestic product (–6.8%) to a positive value by July 2020. The number of cumulative patients with COVID-19 in this setting was confined to 363, of whom 361 had recovered (recovery rate 99.4%) as of July 12, 2020. A simulation showed that if only partial measures of the framework were followed, the number of cumulative cases of COVID-19 could potentially increase ten-fold. This approach can serve as a reliable solution to counteract the emergency of a public health crisis; as a routine tool to enhance the level of public health; to accelerate the recovery of social activities; to assist decision making for policy makers; and as a sustainable measure that enables scalability.