COVID-19 phone apps shown to provide real-time information on the spread of infectious diseases

Digital contact tracing uses a proximity-detecting phone app to alert people at risk of being infected. They found that digital contact tracing can provide unprecedented insights into epidemic dynamics, allowing public health bodies to better monitor and analyse evolving epidemics. We must build systems such as contact tracing in advance to prepare the world for future pandemics, making sure lessons from COVID-19 are implemented rather than forgotten.' 'We have shown that privacy-preserving data from digital contact tracing can reveal valuable information about transmission very quickly and in remarkable detail. The full paper 'Drivers of epidemic dynamics in real time from daily digital COVID-19 measurements' is published in Science.