Could Contact-Tracing Apps Help With the Hantavirus? Not Really

"“There is no use of apps for this hantavirus outbreak,” Emily Gurley, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins University, wrote in an email response to WIRED. “The number of cases are small, and it's important to trace all contacts exactly to stop transmission.”"

"On a smaller scale of infection like this, officials have to start at the source (an infected individual), then go person-by-person, confirming where they went and who they might have come into contact with. Data collected by apps from a broad swath of devices would not be anywhere close to accurate enough to give a good idea of where the virus might have hitchhiked to next."

"Contact tracing on a wider scale, like, say, a global pandemic, is less about tracking the individual infections and more about understanding what parts of the population might be affected, giving people the opportunity to self-quarantine after exposure. But that depends on how people choose to respond, and how the technology is utilized by public emergency systems."

"Contact-tracing apps were a global effort starting in 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic. Enabled by phone companies like Apple and Google, contact tracing was designed to use Bluetooth connections to detect when people had come in contact with someone who had or would later test positive for Covid and report as much. It didn't do much to solve the spread of the pandemic, but tracking the virus became more effective at least."

Three people died after a cruise ship was struck by a hantavirus, and authorities are tracking 29 people who left the ship to trace possible spread. Contact-tracing apps were developed globally during the Covid-19 pandemic using Bluetooth signals between phones to identify close contacts and enable reporting after later positive tests. Those tools did not significantly stop Covid transmission, though they improved tracking. For a hantavirus outbreak with few cases, officials must confirm contacts precisely by starting with an infected individual and verifying where each person went and who they may have encountered. Broad app data would not provide sufficient accuracy to determine where the virus spread next. Wider app-based tracing during pandemics focused more on estimating affected population segments and enabling self-quarantine, which depended on public response and emergency system use.

Read at WIRED