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Contact tracing with digital assistance in Taiwan's COVID-19 outbreak response.
- Source :
-
International Journal of Infectious Diseases . Dec2020, Vol. 101, p348-352. 5p. - Publication Year :
- 2020
-
Abstract
- • Robust contact tracing with an integrated system effectively intervenes early transmission of COVID-19 in Taiwan. • Developing an integrated management system to support traditional contact tracing is critical in response to control the spread of COVID-19. • Management tools augment the capacity and decrease workloads of contact tracers, which improve contact tracing effectiveness. Comprehensive case investigation and contact tracing are crucial to prevent community spread of COVID-19. We demonstrated a utility of using traditional contact tracing measures supplemented with symptom tracking and contact management system to assist public health workers with high efficiency. A centralized contact tracing system was developed to support data linkage, cross-jurisdictional coordination, and follow-up of contacts' health status. We illustrated the process of how digital tools support contact tracing and management of COVID-19 cases and measured the timeliness from case detection to contact monitoring to evaluate system performance. Among the 8051 close contacts of the 487 confirmed cases (16.5 close contacts/case, 95% CI [13.9–19.1]), the median elapsed time from last exposure to quarantine was three days (IQR 1–5). By implementing the approach of self-reporting using automatic text-messages and web-app, the percentage of health status updates from self-reporting increased from 22.5% to 61.5%. The high proportion of secondary cases detected via contact tracing (88%) might reduce the R0 to under one and minimize the impact of local transmission in the community. Comprehensive contact tracing and management with complementary technology would still be a pillar of strategies for containing outbreaks during de-escalation or early in the next wave of COVID-19 pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 12019712
- Volume :
- 101
- Database :
- Academic Search Index
- Journal :
- International Journal of Infectious Diseases
- Publication Type :
- Academic Journal
- Accession number :
- 147317582
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijid.2020.09.1483