Contact Tracing—Where Does it Stand?

In the last few weeks, most states across the U.S. have relaxed restrictions and shelter-in-place orders, letting people back out from their homes and allowing shuttered businesses to get back to work. One important factor to maintaining these re-opening efforts is effective contact tracing, in which hospitals can “map” who an infected person may have interacted with so they can immediately quarantine to curb further spread of the disease.

Why is it so important? Because it works. Contact tracing was lauded as one of the defining methods to successfully control and subside the 2014 Ebola outbreaks in Africa. Naturally, contact tracing entered the conversation as the number of COVID-19 cases skyrocketed and health officials took notice of how quickly it passed from person-to-person. The challenge now is, how do we do it?

Historically, it has been done manually—where infected patients identify where they’ve gone and who they might have exposed within a certain time period so volunteers can contact them. It’s a laborious process that, unfortunately, can have a low success rate when reliant on people’s memory. The conversation then turned to technology, and namely apps, as a reliable solution. Big banner tech brands like Apple & Google led the charge, but were met with significant pushback. Apps, convenience aside, prevented a myriad of issues, most notably concerns around security. 

So where do things stand now, as the country treads out from the first wave’s shadow? According to a recent survey, apps haven’t garnered consumer favor as 71% of respondents noted that they would not download a contact tracing app. Why? For the vast majority, out of fear of privacy concerns. As for states that have rolled out their own versions, they haven’t seen the results they hoped for. For example, South Dakota has only seen 2% of its population download the app to participate. Many states have ruled out using such technology entirely.

As for manual contact tracing, there have been challengers there as well. According to a recent NPR survey, 37 states do not have an adequate number of contact tracers to be effective. What’s worse is that time—and acting fast—is critical in a pandemic, and health professionals will not always be able to reach contacts before they expose others, if at all.

No method is perfect of course, but in review of the options at hand it’s clear that more can and needs to be done. One solution? Wearable technology. Using wearables, businesses can deploy stand-alone tech that helps them protect employees and customers. These devices can signal when people get too close to one another and store interaction data, such as time and duration, so if someone tests positive, employers can view who that person may have come into contact with. Armed with this information, owners can do their part to contact trace at the business-level instead of relying on voluntary or ineffective solutions at the individual level. 

At Proxfinity, we’ve been successfully monitoring person-to-person interaction for years, and for thousands of people. We know that we all need to do our part to keep ourselves and others safe and healthy, and want to help business owners do exactly that. With our ResCUE smart badge, we can put power back in their hands and help move our society safely forward. Interested in how we might be able to help you

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Lisa Carrel