Contact tracing around the world

TAIWAN has been exceptionally successful at keeping Covid-19 at bay, marking its 200th consecutive day without a locally transmitted case as of end-October.

It recorded 553 cases out of 23 million inhabitants without having to introduce strict lockdowns. One of the reasons for its efficiency is a quick national-level response, mass testing and effective and careful contact tracing. It’s Centre for Disease Control utilises an electronic tracing system to record the daily health status of individuals in quarantine and collects data like age, gender, the index case, date of exposure and exposure setting.

Another country that has been keeping Covid-19 numbers low is South Korea with about 26,000 cases for a population of more than 51 million. It combined traditional contact tracing methods with technology to accelerate the process. These involved a government app, linking large databases and utilising surveillance like global positioning systems, credit card transactions, closed-circuit television and mobile phone location logs to identify potential cases. All these measures are complemented by rigorous testing – altogether, South Korea has tested more than 2.59 million people since Jan 3.

Australia utilises the national Covidsafe app which records the names (this can be a pseudonym), age range, mobile number and postcode of users. The app does not record users’ locations, but is notified when other nearby devices also have the app installed and takes note through “a digital handshake” which can later be used for contact tracing. Australia records just over 27,500 cases and 907 deaths for its population of approximately 25.7 million.

Singapore’s TraceTogether app works alongside its national digital check-in system, Safe Entry to monitor potential Covid-19 cases. Like Malaysia, they scan in a QR code and submit personal particulars. Recently, the city state also distributed bluetooth-enabled contact tracing wearables as a solution for those without smartphones. Singapore records more than 58,000 cases with a population of approximately 5.7 million.

The United States remains the country with the highest number of Covid-19 cases at about nine million reported cases with at least 228,000 deaths. Although this abysmal record is largely due to its overall haphazard response to the pandemic, the lack of a nationally coordinated contact tracing mechanism has hampered its public health measures.