Effectiveness evaluation of digital contact tracing for COVID-19 in New South Wales, Australia

  1. Florian Vogt
  2. Bridget Haire
  3. Linda Selvey
  4. Anthea L Katelaris
  5. John Kaldor

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Abstract

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  1. Version published to 10.1016/s2468-2667(22)00010-x
  2. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2021.11.18.21266558: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    EthicsConsent: Once a person is diagnosed with SARS-CoV-2 infection, public health staff can seek informed consent from the case to access app data for contact tracing purposes.
    IRB: Ethics: We obtained ethics approval from the University of New South Wales Human Research Ethics Committee (reference number HC200468).
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    All statistical analyses were performed using STATA v.
    STATA
    suggested: (Stata, RRID:SCR_012763)
    15 (StataCorp, College Station, Texas, United States).
    StataCorp
    suggested: (Stata, RRID:SCR_012763)

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:
    There were several limitations in our study. First, while app usage among cases in our study was only half of that estimated in the general population in Australia,(19) we did not investigate the reasons for non-uptake among cases. Second, we could not determine to what extent the absence of registered contacts during the entire infectious period of some app-using cases was real or a result of technical problems of the app as described above. Third, prior to August 2020 the quality of surveillance data was insufficient to establish a reliable count of close contacts per case, and app use among contacts that were not app-suggested was not ascertained. As a result, we had to assume the same levels of app uptake among cases and contacts in order to estimate sensitivity (see footnote of Table 2). Fourth, we could not quantify the overall workload generated by the app for public health staff, in particular for the risk assessment of app-suggested contacts that did not meet the close contact definition. Key implications of our findings are that conventional case interviews should remain the primary source of contact tracing information, and that all potential contacts, whether app-suggested or not, should undergo the same risk assessment by public health staff to establish their infection risk. The app may have shown greater benefits if uptake among the population at risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection had been higher. It may also have been more effective had it been used in a more target...

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    Results from scite Reference Check: We found no unreliable references.

    About SciScore

    SciScore is an automated tool that is designed to assist expert reviewers by finding and presenting formulaic information scattered throughout a paper in a standard, easy to digest format. SciScore checks for the presence and correctness of RRIDs (research resource identifiers), and for rigor criteria such as sex and investigator blinding. For details on the theoretical underpinning of rigor criteria and the tools shown here, including references cited, please follow this link.

  3. Version published to 10.1101/2021.11.18.21266558v1 on medRxiv