Can somebody please explain what contact tracing is?

[ladypete]

Apologies if I seem dim. How does it work? I though some of you may be in a country that is doing it currently or just understands the concept better than I do?

I understand that you need to trace anyone you had contact with for over 15 mins in close proximity. So an entire train carriage perhaps? Everyone in a meeting at work? A long queue? A school classroom?

What happens if people are asymptomstic, but managed to infect you? Does everyone you say you’ve been in contact with get tested or would they just find the link by working out who also has other people within their circles fallen ill? Surely the latter wouldn’t be reliable. Is it left to an app like other countries have used (South Korea I believe)

I live in London, and will be using public transport when I eventually go back to work so I am intrigued to see how this next phase is meant to work. I’m wondering whether we’ll get messages asking whether we were on the 9.48am to Waterloo in Carriage 3 last Thursday...etc.

It seems like a very hard thing to do, but I’m sure that’s because I don’t understand the logistics.

Thanks in advance for any clarity!

I thought the NHS would pay

Who would do all the work for no pay?

Oh, doh....software companies who want data. My bad.

I don't think it's bonkers or OTT at all. It's the reason my kids can still go to school (every other day), most of our shops are open, no restrictions on us leaving the house. I'm really happy with it because it means more freedom for the majority, and it's been extremely effective.

And of course people are paid if they cannot work from home while quarantining.

Oh sorry I'm only talking about Iceland. I don't know who is doing the work in the UK. The data is only accessed by the contact tracing team, this is all approved by the Data Protection Authority here. It will be destroyed after it is no longer useful.

But anyway not everyone has the app (I don't because my phone is broken and the location tracking doesn't work). If I was diagnosed they'd do the contact tracing just by asking me about my movements.

Puffin - you’re not in the UK.

How do they manage if people don’t have smartphones?

Ah - xpost

They've been doing it that way for weeks and weeks before the app was developed. It's just labour saving and improves accuracy.

I can’t see how contact tracing can be an effective tool unless authorities know where each person was and when they were there, and numbers were low. Once you get into the thousands of infections, I imagine it becomes impossible.

This whole thing is so OTT.

One third of the entire population of the planet is in some form of lockdown.

To be honest, to me it seems much more OTT to close almost everything down or to keep an entire population inside as much as possible instead of at least trying to actually find the people who are infected.

Yes, testing and tracing requires resources and a lot of dedicated people to do the work. But it's a lot cheaper and less disruptive than shutting everything down. If larger nations dedicated a proportionally equivalent amount of resources and manpower to this I don't see any reason they couldn't have done the same thing.

And yes, it is impossible to be 100% successful - some cases will always slip through the net. But you don't need to be 100% successful to make a big difference - 50% seems to be good enough in conjunction with a moderate level of enforced distancing. Even a lower percentage must have SOME impact. No need to write the idea off just because it's not perfect.

It's patently untrue that authorities in Iceland know where everyone is at all times - most of the 50% success rate was achieved just through asking people where they'd been and who they'd met, which is obviously quite faulty in many ways. It must indeed be harder the more out of hand you let things become before you start, though. Perhaps the ship has sailed for now and I think it would definitely have been better to take that approach from day 1.

Puffin - yes,if they had done the most basic contact tracing initially we wouldn’t be in this situation. That’s what I think it’s OTT. lockdown, then get told you’ve got to quarantine because you sat next to someone on the bus and they had it.

@puffinshop how does it work for hcp who come into contact with 100 of patients a week?

They are wearing protective equipment and are not quarantined.