As an epidemiologist, I know how well contact tracing could work for coronavirus | Keith Neal
If used with adequate testing, isolation and social distancing, tracing could be key to reducing the spread of Covid-19
As quarantine measures are slowly lifted in the UK, the virus will continue to spread unless the government puts in place a strategy to curb the rate of infection. Contact tracing, a practice long used in public health to control infectious diseases, will be crucial to driving down the rate of infection, or R, and minimising further cases of coronavirus.
Epidemiologists have been using traditional contact tracing for years to control sexually transmitted infections, infectious diseases such as tuberculosis and meningitis. The basic principle of how an infectious disease spreads is that one individual, person A, will pass on the disease to person B, who then passes it on to C, continuing in a chain to D, E, F and onwards. Epidemiologists interrupt these chains of transmission by identifying people through contact tracing before they spread the infection to others.
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