Leveraging Polio GIS platforms in the African Region for mitigating Covid-19 contact tracing challenges (Preprint)

BACKGROUND The growth of the novel coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic in Africa is an urgent public health crisis. Estimated models project over 150,000 deaths and 4,600,000 hospitalizations in the first year of disease in the absence of adequate interventions. Electronic contact tracing, therefore, offers a critical role in decreasing COVID-19 transmission; yet if not conducted properly can rapidly become a bottleneck for synchronized data collection, case detection, and case management. While the continent is currently reporting relatively low COVID-19 cases, digitized contact tracing mechanisms are necessary for standardizing real-time reporting of new chains of infection to quickly reverse growing trends and halt the pandemic. OBJECTIVE The aim of this study is describing an effective contact tracing smartphone app developed with expertise and experience gained from the numerous digital apps that the Polio programme has used to successfully support disease surveillance and immunization assessment in the African Region. A secondary objective is to describe how we leveraged Polio GIS resources to enhance existing contact tracing solutions to be more efficient through the connection to real-time data visualization platforms. METHODS We propose the use of a hybrid Open Data Kit (ODK) electronic COVID-19 contact registra- tion form that automates contacts and follow-ups. A proof-of-concept form on ODK has been developed that integrates collected contact tracing information from multiple platforms to generate an interactive regional dashboard to monitor the COVID-19 response. Analytics outputs extrapolate key outbreak response indi- cators such as timeliness, completeness and outcomes of contact tracing including new positive cases. This system allows multiple outbreak outputs to be monitored including sources of new infection for immediate response with minimal disruption to existing contact tracing tools. RESULTS Standardized electronic registration of COVID-19 contacts and follow-up using ODK has en- hanced monitoring of contact tracing. Countries and communities have increased their capacity to track COVID-19 cases and contacts in the general population quickly based on the onset of signs or symptoms. Registered contacts for contact tracing are matched to their respective cases more efficiently and for con- tacts that can engage in self-reporting, the anonymity of self-reporting. The country-specific results suggest that higher adoption rates of the tools may result in better quality data on the pandemic and elicited better decisions for a response. CONCLUSIONS Our proposed contact tracing solution which uses ODK based tools on smartphones and visualization bridge systems presents a scalable and easy to implement solution, that collects and aggregates good quality contact data with geographic information that can help make spatial based decisions and preserves privacy while demonstrating the potential to help make better decisions in response to an epidemic or pandemic outbreak. This application has been applied to the current COVID-19 pandemic and can also be used for other epidemics or pandemics in the future, to achieve quality data collection for better decision making.