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We study how homophily of human physical interactions affects the impact of digital proximity tracing on the epidemic evolution. Analytical and numerical results show the existence of different dynamical regimes with respect to the mixing rate between adopters and nonadopters, revealing a rich phenomenology in terms of the reproduction number as well as the attack rate. We corroborate our findings with Monte Carlo simulations on different real contact networks. Our results indicate that depending on infectivity and adoption, mixing between adopters can be beneficial as well as detrimental for disease control. ; G.B. acknowledges financial support from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Grant Agreement No. 945413 and from the Universitat Rovira i Virgili (URV). B.S. acknowledges financial support from the European Unions Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Grant Agreement No. 713679 and from the Universitat Rovira i Virgili (URV). A.A. acknowledges support by Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (Grants No. PGC2018-094754-B-C21 and No. FIS2015-71582-C2-1), Generalitat de Catalunya (Grants No. 2017SGR-896 and No. 2020PANDE00098), Universitat Rovira i Virgili (Grant No. 2019PFR-URV-B2-41), ICREA Academia, and the James S. McDonnell Foundation (Grant No. 220020325). We thank L. Arola-Fernández and A. Cardillo for helpful comments and suggestions. ; Peer Reviewed ; Postprint (author's final draft)

In the wake of the pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), contact tracing has become a key element of strategies to control the spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2). Given the rapid and intense spread of SARS-CoV-2, digital contact tracing has emerged as a potential complementary tool to support containment and mitigation efforts. Early modelling studies highlighted the potential of digital contact tracing to break transmission chains, and Google and Apple subsequently developed the Exposure Notification (EN) framework, making it available to the vast majority of smartphones. A growing number of governments have launched or announced EN-based contact tracing apps, but their effectiveness remains unknown. Here, we report early findings of the digital contact tracing app deployment in Switzerland. We demonstrate proof-of-principle that digital contact tracing reaches exposed contacts, who then test positive for SARS-CoV-2. This indicates that digital contact tracing is an effective complementary tool for controlling the spread of SARS-CoV-2. Continued technical improvement and international compatibility can further increase the efficacy, particularly also across country borders. ; ISSN:1424-7860 ; ISSN:1424-3997

Background: Digital proximity tracing apps have been released to mitigate the transmission of SARS-CoV-2, the virus known to cause COVID-19. However, it remains unclear how the acceptance and uptake of these apps can be improved. Objective: This study aimed to investigate the coverage of the Swiss Covid app and the reasons for its nonuse in Switzerland during a period of increasing incidence of COVID-19 cases. Methods: We collected data between September 28 and October 8, 2020, via a nationwide online panel survey (COVID-19Social Monitor, N=1511). We examined sociodemographic and behavioral factors associated with app use by using multivariable logistic regression, whereas reasons for app nonuse were analyzed descriptively. Results: Overall, 46.5% (703/1511) of the survey participants reported they used the Swiss Covid app, which was an increase from 43.9% (662/1508) reported in the previous study wave conducted in July 2020. A higher monthly household income (ie, income >CHF 10,000 or >US $11,000 vs income ≤CHF 6000 or

Digital apps using Bluetooth to log proximity events (henceforth, digital contact tracing) are increasingly supported by technologists and governments. By and large, the public debate on this matter focuses on privacy, with experts from both law and technology offering very concrete proposals and participating to a lively debate. Far less attention is paid to effective incentives and their fairness. This paper aims to fill this gap by offering a practical, workable solution for a promising incentive, justified by the ethical principles of non-maleficence, beneficence, autonomy and justice. This incentive is a free phone optimised for running such app.

The success of digital COVID-19 contact tracing requires a strategy that successfully addresses the digital divide—inequitable access to technology such as smartphones. Lack of access both undermines the degree of social benefit achieved by the use of tracing apps, and exacerbates existing social and health inequities because those who lack access are likely to already be disadvantaged. Recently, Singapore has introduced portable tracing wearables (with the same functionality as a contact tracing app) to address the equity gap and promote public health. We argue that governments have an ethical obligation to ensure fair access to the protective benefits of contract tracing during the pandemic and that wearables are an effective way of addressing some important equity issues. The most contentious issues about contact tracing apps have been the potential infringements of privacy and individual liberty, especially where the use of apps or other technology (such as wearables or QR codes) is required for access to certain spaces. Here we argue that wearables, as opposed to apps alone, will make a digital contact tracing mandate more practical and explain some conditions under which such a mandate would be justified. We focus on Singapore as a case study that has recently deployed contact tracing wearables nationally, but also reference debate about wearables in Australia and New Zealand. Our analysis will be relevant to counties trialling similar portable tracing wearables.

AbstractOver a third of the world's countries have launched contact‐tracing apps in response to the COVID‐19 pandemic, generating much hype about the prospect of automating contact‐tracing to manage outbreaks and to alleviate costly and labour‐intensive 'manual' contact tracing. Despite the stringent scientific criteria applied to the development of vaccines and other 'biomedical countermeasures' in responding to the pandemic, digital contact tracing has been widely recommended despite being an unproven public health intervention. Evidence for its effectiveness is thin, based on theoretical mathematical modelling and unsystematic observations across diverse country contexts. Establishing evidence of effectiveness is complicated by the fact that two private corporations, Apple and Google, own the technology upon which most government contact‐tracing apps are based and which, by design, restricts access to needed data on privacy grounds. In this policy insight, we make the case for why public health authorities urgently need to establish the effectiveness and societal implications of this big digital contact‐tracing experiment.

BACKGROUND: Reducing the transmission of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS‐CoV‐2) is a global priority. Contact tracing identifies people who were recently in contact with an infected individual, in order to isolate them and reduce further transmission. Digital technology could be implemented to augment and accelerate manual contact tracing. Digital tools for contact tracing may be grouped into three areas: 1) outbreak response; 2) proximity tracing; and 3) symptom tracking. We conducted a rapid review on the effectiveness of digital solutions to contact tracing during infectious disease outbreaks. OBJECTIVES: To assess the benefits, harms, and acceptability of personal digital contact tracing solutions for identifying contacts of an identified positive case of an infectious disease. SEARCH METHODS: An information specialist searched the literature from 1 January 2000 to 5 May 2020 in CENTRAL, MEDLINE, and Embase. Additionally, we screened the Cochrane COVID‐19 Study Register. SELECTION CRITERIA: We included randomised controlled trials (RCTs), cluster‐RCTs, quasi‐RCTs, cohort studies, cross‐sectional studies and modelling studies, in general populations. We preferentially included studies of contact tracing during infectious disease outbreaks (including COVID‐19, Ebola, tuberculosis, severe acute respiratory syndrome virus, and Middle East respiratory syndrome) as direct evidence, but considered comparative studies of contact tracing outside an outbreak as indirect evidence. The digital solutions varied but typically included software (or firmware) for users to install on their devices or to be uploaded to devices provided by governments or third parties. Control measures included traditional or manual contact tracing, self‐reported diaries and surveys, interviews, other standard methods for determining close contacts, and other technologies compared to digital solutions (e.g. electronic medical records). DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS: Two review authors independently screened records and all ...

Recently, the concept of sovereignty in the digital has attracted much attention. Several publications dealing with this concept assume that it can best be described as a network of different, overlapping exercises of power. Nevertheless, there is a need for further research on how exactly sovereignty in the digital can be understood. In order to contribute to a better understanding of this concept, I illustrate its complex structure using contact tracing apps as a paradigmatic example. I conduct a narrative review to show what sovereignty looks like in the context of these apps. In the context of digital contact tracing apps, sovereignty is best understood as a complex network of three actors-nations, (big tech) companies, and individuals-that exercise various forms of power against or on behalf of each other to claim sovereignty for themselves and to either weaken or strengthen the sovereignty claims of other actors. Since large parts of the results can be generalized from the particular context of contact tracing apps, they contribute to a better overall understanding of the concept of sovereignty in digital. This might, in turn, be helpful for discussions about this technology as well as about the regulation and governance of the digital in general.

The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic is a public health challenge of unprecedented scale. In the midst of the first wave of the pandemic, governments worldwide introduced digital contact tracing systems as part of a strategy to contain the spread of the virus. In Europe, after intense discussion about privacy-related risks involving policymakers, technology experts, information technology companies, and—albeit to a limited extent—the public at large, technical protocols were created to support the development of privacy-compatible proximity tracing apps. However, as the second wave of SARS-CoV-2 sweeps the continent, digital contact tracing in Europe is evolving in terms of both technological and governance features. To enable policymakers to harness the full potential of digital health tools against SARS-CoV-2, this paper examines the evolution of digital contact tracing in eight European countries. Our study highlights that while privacy and data protection are at the core of contact tracing apps in Europe, countries differ in their technical protocols, and in their capacity to utilize collected data beyond proximity tracing alone. In particular, the most recently released apps tend to offer users more granular information about risk in specific locations, and to collect data about user whereabouts, in order to enhance retrospective contact tracing capacity. These developments signal a shift from a strict interpretation of data minimization and purpose limitation toward a more expansive approach to digital contact tracing in Europe, calling for careful scrutiny and appropriate oversight. ; ISSN:2673-253X

This open access book describes Smittestopp, the first Norwegian system for digital contact tracing of Covid-19 infections, which was developed in March and early April 2020. The system was deployed after five weeks of development and was active for a little more than two months, when a drop in infection levels in Norway and privacy concerns led to shutting it down. The intention of this book is twofold. First, it reports on the design choices made in the development phase. Second, as one of the only systems in the world that collected population data into a central database and which was used for an entire population, we can share experience on how the design choices impacted the system's operation. By sharing lessons learned and the challenges faced during the development and deployment of the technology, we hope that this book can be a valuable guide for experts from different domains, such as big data collection and analysis, application development, and deployment in a national population, as well as digital tracing.

The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic is a public health challenge of unprecedented scale. In the midst of the first wave of the pandemic, governments worldwide introduced digital contact tracing systems as part of a strategy to contain the spread of the virus. In Europe, after intense discussion about privacy-related risks involving policymakers, technology experts, information technology companies, and—albeit to a limited extent—the public at large, technical protocols were created to support the development of privacy-compatible proximity tracing apps. However, as the second wave of SARS-CoV-2 sweeps the continent, digital contact tracing in Europe is evolving in terms of both technological and governance features. To enable policymakers to harness the full potential of digital health tools against SARS-CoV-2, this paper examines the evolution of digital contact tracing in eight European countries. Our study highlights that while privacy and data protection are at the core of contact tracing apps in Europe, countries differ in their technical protocols, and in their capacity to utilize collected data beyond proximity tracing alone. In particular, the most recently released apps tend to offer users more granular information about risk in specific locations, and to collect data about user whereabouts, in order to enhance retrospective contact tracing capacity. These developments signal a shift from a strict interpretation of data minimization and purpose limitation toward a more expansive approach to digital contact tracing in Europe, calling for careful scrutiny and appropriate oversight.

This article offers innovations at the nexus of theory and method for an ethnographic and engaged political ecology. In it we consider the expansion of digital technologies and digitally-mediated social interactions within and beyond the kinds of geographically out-of-the-way sites that have long animated this interdisciplinary field. These transformations, we argue, are taking place at such vast scope and speed that they merit inclusion in the ongoing critical conversation about the methods, commitments, and contributions of political ecology, especially as these relate to the concepts of distance and difference. Putting our field research in Uganda and Bolivia in conversation with our experiences as xennial ethnographers, here we examine three themes: how digital connectivity is changing "the field" and fieldwork; how the ubiquity of digital technologies is changing the relationship between "the field" and "home"; and how ethnographically grounded political ecologists can position our research in academic settings where digital data is increasingly prevalent and powerful. While the extension of digital sociality across these spaces limits formerly idealized forms of "critical distance", we suggest it productively enables "critical proximity" – a situated ethnographic stance which rests not just on engagement with our interlocutors across time and place, but also responsiveness to the kinds of claims-making that digital social interactions uniquely enable.