11/15/2023 0 Comments Itracing smart![]() ![]() In the Liberties’ ‘Knowledge Hub’, for example, the downloads chart is topped by Ireland and Finland, with 49% and 45% respectively. One would, therefore, expect a much greater impact in England, for example, than in Italy.Īnd while in general – as we’ll see later in more detail – this seems to be the case according to available evidence, there are noticeable exceptions. Others came closer, though: Germany (33%), England and Wales (36%), Denmark (38%). Actually, data gathered by Liberties show that many didn’t even come close at the time of writing, Italy (17%), Spain (19%), Poland (4%), and Croatia (2%) among them. This is good news, as none of the apps used in Europe have so far been downloaded by 60% of the respective country’s population. As the authors themselves note in an article on TechReview – titled, ‘ No, coronavirus apps don’t need 60% adoption to be effective’ – these apps start “to have a protective effect” at “much lower levels”. However, this 60% threshold was never claimed in the study. ![]() For months, this translated into a narrative, popular in mainstream media, according to which only apps that reached the download threshold of 60% of the population highlighted in a debate-defining Oxford study would be effective in combating the spread of COVID-19. A link between uptake and potential efficacy is by now prominent in the literature: the more the downloads (and actual usage), the better the protection. ![]() Some of the findings are also counter-intuitive. Uptake and effectiveness in a complicated relationship And, depending on which of these two definitions one adopts, very different conclusions can be drawn when it comes to effectiveness. According to the literature review provided by George Grekousis and Ye Liu in ‘ Digital contact tracing, community uptake, and proximity awareness technology to fight COVID-19: a systematic review’, it is possible to conceive of digital contact tracing as both “the number of contacts identified through digital contact tracing”, and – as they themselves do – “the actual effect of digital contact tracing on reducing the effective reproductive number, or the number of infected individuals”. To start with, we don’t even have a generally shared and recognized definition of the “effectiveness” of a digital contact tracing app. Methods applied differ so much that it is, in fact, difficult – if not altogether impossible – to compare findings and provide a coherent, comprehensive evaluation of the impact and effectiveness of digital contact tracing apps in actual responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. While it should by now have become apparent that these apps should not be used under a “tech-solutionist” framing – i.e., that the mere deployment of contact tracing technology won’t “solve” the pandemic by itself –findings on their effectiveness diverge significantly from country to country, and, at times, from study to study. And yet, even if some initial data have been produced, and these early findings can and should be discussed, evidence around the real-world effectiveness of digital contact tracing apps is still contradictory, a review by AlgorithmWatch of the available literature and app usage data has found. More than one year has passed since the first introduction of digital contact tracing apps in several countries around the world – some months later, the MIT Technology Review’s ‘ Covid Tracing Tracker’ listed around 50 globally, 22 of them in the European Union, according to the ’ Knowledge Hub’ maintained by human rights watchdog Liberties. ![]() “Stringent evaluation is needed to develop contact-tracing apps into an accepted and ethical tool for future outbreaks of other infectious diseases”. Only a “rigorous assessment” of the effectiveness of digital contact tracing “allows public-health benefits to be weighed against unwanted effects for individual people and society,” they added. “Time to evaluate COVID-19 contact-tracing apps,” wrote Adam Kucharski, Luca Ferretti, Chris Wymant, Christophe Fraser, and other influential researchers in a correspondence article on the Nature Medicine website in February 2021. ![]()
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