Community Contact Tracing Adds Power of Place to Contact Tracing for COVID-19

As public health authorities around the world call for contact tracing to be scaled to unprecedented levels, Esri is advocating for a new concept called Community Contact Tracing. By expanding the person-to-person approach, inherent in traditional contact tracing, to include person-to-person-to-place, public health analysts will be able to perform location analytics to illuminate the places where viral spread is happening outside of direct and prolonged contact between two individuals. For example, maybe the person who is a confirmed Case shops at the same home improvement store as a Contact. When places of transmission are identified, decision-makers can take action—whether that means focused cleaning and disinfecting or tightening social distancing measures in and around that location.