Individual level analysis of digital proximity tracing for COVID-19 in Belgium highlights major bottlenecks.
Nat Commun
; 14(1): 6717, 2023 10 23.
Article
em En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-37872213
ABSTRACT
To complement labour-intensive conventional contact tracing, digital proximity tracing was implemented widely during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the privacy-centred design of the dominant Google-Apple exposure notification framework has hindered assessment of its effectiveness. Between October 2021 and January 2022, we systematically collected app use and notification receipt data within a test and trace programme targeting around 50,000 university students in Leuven, Belgium. Due to low success rates in each studied step of the digital notification cascade, only 4.3% of exposed contacts (CI 2.8-6.1%) received such notifications, resulting in 10 times more cases detected through conventional contact tracing. Moreover, the infection risk of digitally traced contacts (5.0%; CI 3.0-7.7%) was lower than that of conventionally traced non-app users (9.8%; CI 8.8-10.7%; p = 0.002). Contrary to common perception as near instantaneous, there was a 1.2-day delay (CI 0.6-2.2) between case PCR result and digital contact notification. These results highlight major limitations of a digital proximity tracing system based on the dominant framework.
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1
Base de dados:
MEDLINE
Assunto principal:
Aplicativos Móveis
/
COVID-19
Idioma:
En
Ano de publicação:
2023
Tipo de documento:
Article