Measuring the scientific effectiveness of contact tracing: Evidence from a natural experiment
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Abstract
Contact tracing constitutes the backbone of nonpharmaceutical public interventions against COVID-19, as it did with previous pandemics. Experts argue that its importance rises again as vaccination rates increase and the spread of COVID-19 slows, which makes tracing of individual cases possible. However, because randomized experiments on contact tracing are infeasible, causal evidence about its effectiveness is missing. This shortage of evidence is alarming as governments around the world invest in large-scale contact tracing systems, frequently facing a lack of cooperation from the population. Exploiting a large-scale natural experiment, we provide evidence that contact tracing may be even more effective than indicated by previous correlational research. Our findings inform current and future public health responses to the spread of infectious diseases.
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SciScore for 10.1101/2020.12.10.20247080: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Institutional Review Board Statement not detected. Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Sex as a biological variable not detected. Table 2: Resources
No key resources detected.
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: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.
Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar …
SciScore for 10.1101/2020.12.10.20247080: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Institutional Review Board Statement not detected. Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Sex as a biological variable not detected. Table 2: Resources
No key resources detected.
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: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.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.
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