The UK Government should extend its Five Pillar Testing Strategy to a Six Pillar Testing and Tracing Strategy by introducing digital contact tracing as a Sixth Pillar. A Testing and Tracing Strategy should bring together expertise from the Department of Health, NHSX, NHS Digital, Police, Military and the Intelligence Agencies, to create a new independent national 24/7 Testing and Tracing Command Centre.
The recent outbreak of COVID-19 has exposed the limitations of traditional manual contact tracing methodologies, a fact that leaders of some Asian economies (e.g. China, South Korea and Singapore) had already understood following their handling of previous pandemics.
When considering the measures needed to counter the further spread of COVID-19 once isolation measures have been relaxed, there is a strong body of evidence emerging from around the world that supports the use of digital contact tracing methodologies alongside a comprehensive mass testing regime.
Recent research by Oxford University concludes that a contact-tracing App which builds memory of proximity, contacts and immediately notifies contacts of positive cases, can achieve epidemic control if used by enough people and that epidemics could be contained without need for mass quarantines (‘lock-downs’) that are harmful to society.
Research shows that the use of mobile phone data can offer a ‘critical contribution to four broad areas of investigations: Situational awareness (trends and geographical distribution), Cause and effect (identifying key drivers and consequences of implementing different measures to contain the spread of COVID-19), Prediction (to enable new predictive capabilities and allow stakeholders to assess future risks, needs and opportunities), Impact assessment(to identify obstacles hampering the achievement of certain objectives or the success of particular interventions).