COVID-19 Contact Tracing: Challenges and Future Directions

• DOI: 10.20944/preprints202006.0240.v2
• Publication Date: 2020-07-14T10:05:09Z
• Authors: Mohammad Jabed Mo...; Md Sadek Ferdous; Kamanashis Biswas; Niaz Chowdhury; Vallipuram Muthuk...
• Keywords: Contact tracing; Pandemic; Tracing

Contact tracing has become a vital tool for public health officials to effectively combat the spread of new diseases, such asthe novel coronavirus disease COVID-19. is not epidemiologist rather, it used manual or semi-manualapproaches that are incredibly time-consuming, costly and inefficient. It mostly relies on human memory while scalabilityis significant challenge in tackling pandemics. The unprecedented socio-economic impacts led researchersand practitioners around world search technology-based approaches providing scalable timely answers.Smartphones associated digital technologies have potential provide better approach due their high level ofpenetration, coupled with mobility. While data-driven solutions extremely powerful, fear among citizens thatinformation like location proximity other personal data can be weaponised by states enforcesurveillance. Low adoption rate apps lack trust questioned efficacy demanded researchers tofind innovative solution building digital-trust, appropriately balancing privacy accuracy data. In this paper,we critically reviewed protocols identify strength weakness each approach. Finally, wehave penned down our recommendations make future contact mechanisms more universally inter-operable andprivacy-preserving.