Acceptability of App-Based Contact Tracing for COVID-19: Cross-Country Survey Study
Acceptability of App-Based Contact Tracing for COVID-19: Cross-Country Survey Study
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DOI：
10.2196/19857
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发表时间：
2020-08-28
影响因子：
5
通讯作者：
Abeler, Johannes
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Altmann, Samuel;Milsom, Luke;Abeler, Johannes
背景资料：新冠肺炎大流行是近百年来最大的公共卫生危机。各国已经采取了不同程度的封锁来拯救生命，防止卫生系统不堪重负。与此同时，封锁带来了巨大的社会经济成本。正在考虑的一种退出战略是一款手机应用程序，可以追踪新冠肺炎感染者的亲密接触者。最近的研究已经证明了这一解决方案在不同疾病环境下的理论有效性。然而，由于潜在的隐私影响，人们对这类应用程序提出了担忧。这可能会限制基于APP的接触者追踪在普通人群中的可接受性。由于这种方法的有效性随着APP的使用而显著增加，了解公众对这种干预措施的支持至关重要。目的：本研究的目的是在五个受疫情影响的国家调查接触者追踪APP的用户可接受性。方法：我们进行了一项大规模的多国家研究(N=5995)，以衡量公众对新冠肺炎感染数字接触者追踪的支持。我们在法国、德国、意大利、英国和美国进行了匿名在线调查。我们衡量了不同安装制度(自愿安装和手机供应商自动安装)下使用联系人追踪应用程序的意愿，并研究了这些意图在不同个人和国家之间的差异。结果：我们发现，在这两种制度下，在所有国家和地区，人口中的所有亚群都强烈支持该应用程序，无论地区层面的新冠肺炎死亡率如何。我们调查了可能阻碍或促进采用该应用的主要因素，发现对网络安全和隐私的担忧以及对政府缺乏信任是采用该应用的主要障碍。结论：流行病学证据表明，如果使用该应用的人口比例足够高，基于APP的接触者追踪可以抑制该应用的传播，如果使用该应用的人口比例适中，它仍然可以减少感染人数。我们的调查结果显示，安装该应用程序的意愿非常高。现有证据表明，基于APP的联系人追踪可能是控制新冠肺炎扩散的可行方法。
Background: The COVID-19 pandemic is the greatest public health crisis of the last 100 years. Countries have responded with various levels of lockdown to save lives and stop health systems from being overwhelmed. At the same time, lockdowns entail large socioeconomic costs. One exit strategy under consideration is a mobile phone app that traces the close contacts of those infected with COVID-19. Recent research has demonstrated the theoretical effectiveness of this solution in different disease settings. However, concerns have been raised about such apps because of the potential privacy implications. This could limit the acceptability of app-based contact tracing in the general population. As the effectiveness of this approach increases strongly with app uptake, it is crucial to understand public support for this intervention.Objective: The objective of this study is to investigate the user acceptability of a contact-tracing app in five countries hit by the pandemic.Methods: We conducted a largescale, multicountry study (N=5995) to measure public support for the digital contact tracing of COVID-19 infections. We ran anonymous online surveys in France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, and the United States. We measured intentions to use a contact-tracing app across different installation regimes (voluntary installation vs automatic installation by mobile phone providers) and studied how these intentions vary across individuals and countries.Results: We found strong support for the app under both regimes, in all countries, across all subgroups of the population, and irrespective of regional-level COVID-19 mortality rates. We investigated the main factors that may hinder or facilitate uptake and found that concerns about cybersecurity and privacy, together with a lack of trust in the government, are the main barriers to adoption.Conclusions: Epidemiological evidence shows that app-based contact tracing can suppress the spread of COVID-19 if a high enough proportion of the population uses the app and that it can still reduce the number of infections if uptake is moderate. Our findings show that the willingness to install the app is very high. The available evidence suggests that app-based contact tracing may be a viable approach to control the diffusion of COVID-19.