January 12, 2021

Bidirectional Contact Tracing Could Dramatically Improve COVID-19 Control

Category: Article Summary

Topic: Modeling and Prediction

Keywords (Tags): contact tracing, modeling, non-pharm interventions, other resources, report

A modeling study found that bi-directional contact tracing could double the reduction in effective reproductive number (R_eff) compared to conventional forward-tracing alone. Bi-directional contact tracing identifies potential infectors of known cases, which could lead to identification of additional cases arising from the potential infectors. The authors also suggest expanding the tracing window from 2-6 days pre-symptom onset or implementing high-uptake smartphone based notification.

Bradshaw et al. (Jan 11, 2021). Bidirectional Contact Tracing Could Dramatically Improve COVID-19 Control. Nature Communications. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-20325-7