Thought of the Day - July 17 - Contact Tracing App

Well here we are: less than 1% infection, largely reopened, and with a small but slowly growing number of cases.

Early on I talked about the three main strategies: Lock 'em Up and Go for Herd Immunity at the extremes and Slow the Burn in the middle https://clifffraser0.wixsite.com/covid-19/post/thought-of-the-day-april-27th-strategy-2-0).

The strategy from most locales seems to be the middle of the road, that can be broken down into:

• prevent (physical distancing, good hygiene, mask use, minimize non-essential travel to/from affected areas, isolate high-risk demographics and institutions);

• detect (symptom education, proactive testing, rapid antigen testing, indirect testing e.g. wastewater (https://clifffraser0.wixsite.com/covid-19/post/thought-of-the-day-july-6-oh-shi-ooot));

• trace (contact tracing, strain transmission tracking);

• isolate (quarantine, outbreak response teams, hot-zone lock-down).

I want to talk a little about contact tracing. As part of the reopening, organizations have been asked to keep logs of patrons and report any cases. The public is also supposed to disclose contacts and check the BC Health website for outbreak information (https://clifffraser0.wixsite.com/covid-19/post/thought-of-the-day-july-3-public-service-announcement). This is a good first step, but as we have seen the places that are starting to get a second wave of outbreaks a manual process quite quickly gets overwhelmed. Most countries have now turned to automation, but as we have seen in many western countries this is easier said than done:

• Device-independent software has to be developed/customized;

• There are the privacy concerns real and imagined to overcome, requiring a significant public education program.

The UK had rolled out an app but then found that it was unreliable on iPhones. They are now considering using an app deployed with more success in Germany. Here in Canada Alberta is leading the charge (as they have in many areas in dealing with COVID). Their ABTraceTogether app was launched May 1 and uses Bluetooth to more accurately and efficiently identify contacts of a confirmed COVID-19 case. Like the UK they have run into some problems, including Apple iOS users needing to have their phone open and the app running in the foreground to record data. In late May, the province announced an update that would enable the app to operate in the background when an iPhone is locked, however, the Alberta Premier noted the federal government has intervened with Alberta’s relationship with tech giants Apple and Google and is blocking app developments for Alberta users. Kenny said earlier this week “They’ve done so because they say they want cooperation on a single national platform, but there isn’t one”. Trudeau had announced a national mobile app a month ago, which was to be available before the end of June, but nothing since. Kenney said the Alberta government has made “repeated requests to the federal government to remove their barrier” to ensure the app functions effectively amid the pandemic.

So it looks like things are stalled on this front for the time being. Hopefully, we will move forward again before COVID does.

Cheers

Cliff