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Researchers analysing data from mobile phone apps used during the COVID-19 pandemic found that digital contact tracing provides rich insights into epidemic dynamics with unprecedented resolution and speed, revealing how transmission varied by day of the week, gatherings during the 2021 Christmas period, and the UEFA Euro football tournament in July 2021

Hands with a mobile phone © Shutterstock

Digital contact tracing uses a proximity-detecting phone app to alert people at risk of being infected. It was implemented for COVID-19 in the UK by the NHS, and also in many other countries.

In a new study published in Science, researchers from the University of Oxford’s Pandemic Sciences Institute, the University of Warwick and the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) analysed data from these apps. They found that digital contact tracing can provide unprecedented insights into epidemic dynamics, allowing public health bodies to better monitor and analyse evolving epidemics.

The authors analysed anonymised data that was collected by the NHS COVID-19 app for England and Wales to ensure its correct function. During the COVID-19 pandemic the authors provided updates of many of the results presented here to the UK Government and public health authorities with weekly frequency, and at peak times daily, for situational awareness.

These results are now for the first time being presented for scientific publication, showing how the analyses performed over the whole pandemic period, along with detailed analyses focused on robustness and generating methods of wider applicability for use in pandemic preparedness.

 

Read the full story on the University of Oxford website.