‘Contact tracing’ could help track the spread of COVID-19

Testing exposes if someone is sick or not—but what if you came in contact with someone with coronavirus and not know it?

The process of tracking down who could be infected is called “Contact tracing”.

The coronavirus can spread by way of human interaction rather quickly. So the goal of health experts in this pandemic is to talk to every person who’s tested positive
and find out who they’ve interacted with.

This will allow them to trace the virus back to the original source.

The official term for all this is contact tracing— and local health departments tell us they are already putting this concept to practice.

“We’re talking thousands of people that we’ve contacted and everything. It’s a very extensive and intensive process,” said Kristine Hollingsworth, Public Information Officer, Florida Department of Health, Collier County.

Governments around the world are looking at our phones that already know exactly where we’ve been, as a way to help sort some of this out.

MIT and Stanford are working on ways to harness Bluetooth connectivity.

Apple and Google said last week they’d work together on a project.

Problems with technology— it’d have to be “Opt-in”, and lawmakers are worried about privacy issues with all that sensitive health info.