Elsevier

Computer Communications

Volume 166, 15 January 2021, Pages 9-18
Computer Communications

Do we need a contact tracing app?

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.comcom.2020.11.007Get rights and content

Abstract

The goal of this paper is to shed some light on the usefulness of a contact tracing smartphone app for the containment of the COVID-19 pandemic. We review the basics of contact tracing during the spread of a virus, we contextualize the numbers to the case of COVID-19 and we analyze the state of the art for proximity detection using Bluetooth Low Energy. Our contribution is to assess if there is scientific evidence of the benefit of a contact tracing app in slowing down the spread of the virus using present technologies. Our conclusion is that such evidence is lacking, and we should re-think the introduction of such a privacy-invasive measure.

Keywords

COVID-19
Contact tracing
Proximity tracing
Privacy
Pandemic

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