Real-Time Digital Contact Tracing: Development of a System to Control COVID-19 Outbreaks in Nursing Homes and Long-Term Care Facilities
Real-Time Digital Contact Tracing: Development of a System to Control COVID-19 Outbreaks in Nursing Homes and Long-Term Care Facilities
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DOI：
10.2196/20828
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发表时间：
2020-07-01
影响因子：
8.5
通讯作者：
Movva, Satish
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Wilmink, Gerald;Summer, Ilyssa;Movva, Satish
Background: Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) can spread rapidly in nursing homes and long-term care (LTC) facilities. Symptoms-based screening and manual contact tracing have limitations that render them ineffective for containing the viral spread in LTC facilities. Symptoms-based screening alone cannot identify asymptomatic people who are infected, and the viral spread is too fast in confined living quarters to be contained by slow manual contact tracing processes.Objective: We describe the development of a digital contact tracing system that LTC facilities can use to rapidly identify and contain asymptomatic and symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infected contacts. A compartmental model was also developed to simulate disease transmission dynamics and to assess system performance versus conventional methods.Methods: We developed a compartmental model parameterized specifically to assess the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) transmission in LTC facilities. The model was used to quantify the impact of asymptomatic transmission and to assess the performance of several intervention groups to control outbreaks: no intervention, symptom mapping, polymerase chain reaction testing, and manual and digital contact tracing.Results: Our digital contact tracing system allows users to rapidly identify and then isolate close contacts, store and track infection data in a respiratory line listing tool, and identify contaminated rooms. Our simulation results indicate that the speed and efficiency of digital contact tracing contributed to superior control performance, yielding up to 52% fewer cases than conventional methods.Conclusions: Digital contact tracing systems show promise as an effective tool to control COVID-19 outbreaks in LTC facilities. As facilities prepare to relax restrictions and reopen to outside visitors, such tools will allow them to do so in a surgical, cost-effective manner that controls outbreaks while safely giving residents back the life they once had before this pandemic hit.
