New York University, School of Law, 40 Washington Sq So, 10012 New York, NY, USA.
New York University, School of Global Public Health, 708 Broadway, New York, NY 10003, USA.
J R Soc Interface. 2022 Sep;19(194):20220369. doi: 10.1098/rsif.2022.0369. Epub 2022 Sep 21.
As the COVID-19 pandemic emerged, public health authorities and software designers considered the possibility that smartphones could be used for contact tracing to control disease spread. Smartphone-based contact tracing was attractive in part because it promised to allow the tracing of contacts that might not be reported using traditional contact tracing methods. Comprehensive contact tracing raises distinctive privacy concerns, however, that have not been previously explored. Contacts outside of an individual's ordinary social network are more likely to be privacy-sensitive, making fear that such contacts will be disclosed a potential disincentive to adoption of smartphone contact tracing. Here, we modify the standard SEIR infectious disease transmission model to incorporate contact tracing and perform a series of simulations aimed at studying the importance of tracing socially distant (and potentially privacy-sensitive) contacts. We find that, for a simple model network, ensuring that distant contacts are traced is surprisingly unimportant as long as contact tracing adoption is sufficiently high. These results suggest that policy-makers designing contact tracing systems should be willing to trade off comprehensiveness for more widespread adoption.
随着 COVID-19 大流行的出现，公共卫生当局和软件设计师考虑了使用智能手机进行接触者追踪以控制疾病传播的可能性。基于智能手机的接触者追踪之所以具有吸引力，部分原因是它有望追踪到可能无法通过传统接触者追踪方法报告的接触者。然而，全面的接触者追踪引起了独特的隐私问题，这些问题以前并未得到探讨。个体的普通社交网络之外的接触者更有可能涉及隐私敏感问题，因此担心这些接触者会被披露，可能会成为采用智能手机接触者追踪的潜在障碍。在这里，我们修改了标准的 SEIR 传染病传播模型，纳入了接触者追踪，并进行了一系列模拟，旨在研究追踪社交疏远（和潜在隐私敏感）接触者的重要性。我们发现，对于一个简单的模型网络，只要接触者追踪的采用率足够高，确保追踪远距离接触者就显得不那么重要了。这些结果表明，设计接触者追踪系统的政策制定者应该愿意权衡全面性以换取更广泛的采用。
