An evaluation of the COVID-19 self-service digital contact tracing system in New Zealand

IF 3.6 3区医学 Q1 HEALTH CARE SCIENCES & SERVICES Health Policy Pub Date : 2024-04-17 DOI:10.1016/j.healthpol.2024.105073

Tim Chambers , Andrew Anglemyer , Andrew Tzer-Yeu Chen , Michael G. Baker

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Abstract

Background

Digital contact tracing (DCT) aims to improve time-to-isolation (timeliness) and find more potentially exposed individuals (sensitivity) to enhance the utility of contact tracing. The aim of this study was to evaluate the public uptake of a DCT self-service survey and its integration with the Bluetooth exposure notification system within the New Zealand Covid Tracer App (NZCTA).

Methods

We adopted a retrospective cohort study design using community COVID-19 cases from February 2022 to August 2022 in New Zealand (1.2 million cases). We examined the proportion of cases completing a self-service survey and the time to complete the survey by age, sex and ethnicity.

Results

Overall, 66 % of cases completed their self-service survey. Completion was influenced by age, sex and ethnicity. The median completion time was 1.8 h (IQR 0.2, 17.2), with 95 % of those completing this survey doing so within 48 h of case identification. Around 13 % of all survey completers also uploaded their Bluetooth data, which resulted in an average of 663 cases per day notifying 4.5 contacts per case.

Conclusion

The combination of high public uptake and rapid response times suggest self-service DCT could be a useful tool for future outbreaks, particularly if implemented in conjunction with manual processes and other DCT tools (e.g. Bluetooth) to address issues related to performance (sensitivity, timeliness), effectiveness, and health equity.

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对新西兰 COVID-19 自助式数字联系人追踪系统的评估

背景数字接触者追踪（DCT）旨在提高隔离时间（及时性）和发现更多潜在暴露者（敏感性），从而提高接触者追踪的效用。本研究旨在评估公众对 DCT 自助调查及其与新西兰 Covid 追踪应用程序（NZCTA）中蓝牙暴露通知系统的整合的接受程度。我们研究了完成自助调查的病例比例，以及按年龄、性别和种族划分的完成调查时间。完成率受年龄、性别和种族的影响。完成时间的中位数为 1.8 小时（IQR 0.2，17.2），其中 95% 的人是在病例确认后 48 小时内完成调查的。大约 13% 的调查完成者还上传了他们的蓝牙数据，这导致平均每天通知 663 个病例，每个病例通知 4.5 个联系人。结论公众的高接受率和快速响应时间表明，自助式 DCT 可以成为未来疫情爆发的有用工具，特别是如果与人工流程和其他 DCT 工具（如蓝牙）结合使用，以解决与性能（敏感性、及时性）、有效性和健康公平相关的问题。

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来源期刊

Health Policy 医学-卫生保健

CiteScore

6.40

自引率

6.10%

发文量

157

审稿时长

3-8 weeks

期刊介绍： Health Policy is intended to be a vehicle for the exploration and discussion of health policy and health system issues and is aimed in particular at enhancing communication between health policy and system researchers, legislators, decision-makers and professionals concerned with developing, implementing, and analysing health policy, health systems and health care reforms, primarily in high-income countries outside the U.S.A.