March 29, 2021

Stochastic Sampling Effects Favor Manual over Digital Contact Tracing

Category: Article Summary

Topic: Modeling and Prediction

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

• A study using a stochastic model to compare manual and digital contact tracing methods found that even if the probability of tracing a contact was equal by each method, manual tracing robustly performed better than digital, after accounting for intrinsic delays and limited scalability associated with manual measures. The authors note that better performance of manual tracing is enhanced by heterogeneity in individual behavior; “superspreaders” not using digital contact tracing apps are invisible to digital contact tracing, while they can be easily traced manually due to their multiple contacts. 

Mancastroppa et al. (Dec 26, 2021). Stochastic Sampling Effects Favor Manual over Digital Contact Tracing. Nature Communications. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-22082-7