BBB National Programs Newsroom

To confront coronavirus, governments across the globe have devised approaches for tracing its spread and quarantining individuals known to be carriers, also known as “contact tracing.” While almost all strategies rely on traditional means of contacting and recording the movements of infected individuals, many employ modern communications technologies: sensors, Bluetooth, GPS, thermal recognition, facial-recognition, and geofencing.

Across the world, new apps are being created to facilitate contact tracing through mobile devices. The hope is that through these technologies, governments across the globe avoid future lockdowns and moderate social distancing orders. Though governments and corporations have marshalled impressive resources to develop these strategies, contact tracing powered by smartphones comes with inevitable challenges, regardless of the technologies used and the categories of contact data generated.

Imagine that you have been placed in charge of setting up a contact tracing system using the smartphones already in the hands of the public. As we explained in our first piece in this series, one of the main goals of this system is to alert those who may have come into contact with others infected with coronavirus. Certain information—such as the precise location where such contact has taken place—may be useful but is not strictly necessary to the app’s purpose. And, for the sake of privacy, you want to avoid releasing identifying...

SARS-CoV-2, commonly known as coronavirus, hit the world by storm, altering the lives of people from the American midwest to Shanghai. As the world unites to “flatten the curve” and guard the surge capacities of hospitals, a common term that has emerged is “contact tracing.” Contact tracing is broadly defined as monitoring individuals that have had contact with a person infected by a disease to ensure that they get treatment and prevent further transmission.