Are contact-tracing apps an effective solution to COVID-19 crisis?

One of the recent solutions to combating the Covid-19 pandemic is the use of contact-tracing apps. The method of contact tracing is quite known for its use in the outbreaks of contagious diseases, but apps for this process is something new to people. Smartphones can track down the people who may have been exposed to coronavirus. But this proposal is criticized in a sense that it may harm people's privacy and use their personal information.

What is contact tracing?

Contact tracing is an important component of the overall strategy to control infectious diseases or any outbreak of a contagious disease. For epidemiologic investigation and active surveillance, it is a much-needed technique. A typical method of contact tracing is like detective work where trained staff interview patients with a contagious disease to find out the people with whom they may have met recently. A next step of this strategy is to inform those people to take precautions and to quarantine themselves to prevent the exposure of the disease any further. It's a time-tested investigation method that is already used successfully to fight the outbreaks of diseases like Ebola, measles, and HIV.

However, the traditional process is laborious. Interviewing infectious patients takes a lot of time and it's hard to remember whom we've recently met. And proper training is also needed for the staff.

How do contact-tracing apps work?

A contact-tracing app lets people know if they have been met someone who later turns out to be COVID-19 positive. It can pinpoint who actually needs to be in quarantine and who doesn't. The main purpose of these apps is to track down people and alert them to be in self-isolation faster than the traditional methods allow. There are different contact-tracing apps intended to tackle COVID-19.

NHS COVID-19 app and CovidSafe

The UK's contact-tracing app 'NHS COVID-19 app' is primarily available for NHS staff on the Isle of Wight. Later, it'll be available all over the UK if it's proved to be effective. One needs to install this app from Google or Apple stores and enable the Bluetooth and add postcode. When two people meet, their smartphones will exchange a 'key' through Bluetooth signals to identify the individuals. If a person diagnosed with COVID-19 enters his latest status in the app, it'll ask him to upload the previous 14 days' Bluetooth keys to the cloud. This data will be shared with a health service database and the people he's been in contact with will be notified urging them to isolate themselves.

CovidSafe is the app launched by the Australian Government to trace the people with COVID-19 and warn others. It is almost like the NHS COVID-19 app. Install, put your name (or pseudonym), age, postcode and phone number, and enable the Bluetooth. Using Bluetooth signals, it also notifies the users when it's needed. One problem arises with how Google and Apple restrict Bluetooth usage by apps in iOS and Android. Developers cannot constantly broadcast Bluetooth signals. If the phone is locked there will be no signal, something but iOS and the latest versions of Android manage. Google and Android can rewrite these rules but UK prefers to do this on their own meaning their apps may not be that effective without bringing in the two tech giants.

Apple-Goole contact-tracing tool

Google and Apple have been developing a contact-tracing tool since April that is based on Bluetooth signals or 'keys'. However, it'll not collect users' GPS location data. To protect patients' anonymity, it'll notify others but won't provide real-time alerts. Users can adjust their settings to decide whether they want to receive COVID-19 notifications or not. People need to opt-in to share their COVID-19 status and the government can't extract information against their will. However, users can get notifications that include official information provided by government health authorities. The first version of the tool is already out and this will let health agencies build contact-tracing apps.

 In addition, Germany, Ireland, Belgium, US, France, South Korea, Singapore have also developed or are also developing contact-tracing apps.

Are these safe and useful?

As Bluetooth is not quite secure, its signals can be harvested and imitated by any attacker and so users can be misled. This system claims that they don't harm people's privacy as they have minimum data about the users. The data could still be used for nefarious purposes if someone got those. And not to forget, de-anonymizing is actually an entire domain of study in data science now. Even if we believe that all the data is kept safe by the companies, there is another concern about the authenticity of the information. As users put limited data about themselves, the other users could be confused whether they might have been exposed to COVID-19 or not. This can lead to false alerts.

 It's still hard to claim whether contact-tracing apps are useful or not. There are risks, but benefits may outweigh them.