Do we need a contact tracing app?

The goal of this paper is to shed some light on the usefulness of a contact tracing smartphone app for the containment of the COVID-19 pandemic. We review the basics of contact tracing during the spread of a virus, we contextualize the numbers to the case of COVID-19 and we analyze the state of the...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Maccari, Leonardo, Cagno, Valeria
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Elsevier B.V. 2021
Materias:
Article
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7676320/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33235399
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.comcom.2020.11.007
_version_ 1783611749359943680
author Maccari, Leonardo
Cagno, Valeria
author_facet Maccari, Leonardo
Cagno, Valeria
author_sort Maccari, Leonardo
collection PubMed
description The goal of this paper is to shed some light on the usefulness of a contact tracing smartphone app for the containment of the COVID-19 pandemic. We review the basics of contact tracing during the spread of a virus, we contextualize the numbers to the case of COVID-19 and we analyze the state of the art for proximity detection using Bluetooth Low Energy. Our contribution is to assess if there is scientific evidence of the benefit of a contact tracing app in slowing down the spread of the virus using present technologies. Our conclusion is that such evidence is lacking, and we should re-think the introduction of such a privacy-invasive measure.
format Online
Article
Text
id pubmed-7676320
institution National Center for Biotechnology Information
language English
publishDate 2021
publisher Elsevier B.V.
record_format MEDLINE/PubMed
spelling pubmed-76763202020-11-20 Do we need a contact tracing app? Maccari, Leonardo Cagno, Valeria Comput Commun Article The goal of this paper is to shed some light on the usefulness of a contact tracing smartphone app for the containment of the COVID-19 pandemic. We review the basics of contact tracing during the spread of a virus, we contextualize the numbers to the case of COVID-19 and we analyze the state of the art for proximity detection using Bluetooth Low Energy. Our contribution is to assess if there is scientific evidence of the benefit of a contact tracing app in slowing down the spread of the virus using present technologies. Our conclusion is that such evidence is lacking, and we should re-think the introduction of such a privacy-invasive measure. Elsevier B.V. 2021-01-15 2020-11-19 /pmc/articles/PMC7676320/ /pubmed/33235399 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.comcom.2020.11.007 Text en © 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active.
spellingShingle Article
Maccari, Leonardo
Cagno, Valeria
Do we need a contact tracing app?
title Do we need a contact tracing app?
title_full Do we need a contact tracing app?
title_fullStr Do we need a contact tracing app?
title_full_unstemmed Do we need a contact tracing app?
title_short Do we need a contact tracing app?
title_sort do we need a contact tracing app?
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7676320/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33235399
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.comcom.2020.11.007
work_keys_str_mv AT maccarileonardo doweneedacontacttracingapp
AT cagnovaleria doweneedacontacttracingapp

Ejemplares similares