Toward Deep Digital Contact Tracing: Opportunities and Challenges

During the COVID-19 pandemic, digital contact tracing using mobile devices has been widely explored, with many proposals from academia and industry highlighting the benefits and challenges. Most approaches use Bluetooth low energy signals to learn and trace close contacts among users. However, tracing only these contacts can mask the risk of virus exposure in scenarios with low detection rates. To address this issue, we propose fostering users to exchange information beyond close contacts, particularly about prior “deep” contacts that may have transmitted the virus. This presents new opportunities for controlling the spread of the virus, but also poses challenges that require further investigation. We provide directions for addressing these challenges based on our recent work developing a technological solution using this approach.