Digital Contact-Tracing in a Pandemic… We Need One with a Blended Approach
4 Pages Posted: 30 Jun 2020
Date Written: June 30, 2020
Abstract
Governments across the world are rolling/planning to roll-out digital contact tracing (DCT) to manage the COVID-19 pandemic. However, deploying digital contact-tracing to curtail COVID-19 without recourse to existing structural inequalities, including digital divides, will lead to unintended consequences. Therefore, we propose that while the use of technology is welcomed, governments should bear in mind that exiting structural inequalities, including digital divides, could result in the exclusion of vulnerable people with a myriad of unintended consequences. Accordingly, governments must account for structural inequalities in the design and deployment of DCT to prevent more vulnerable people from falling through the cracks.
Keywords: Blended approach, Contact-tracing, COVID-19, Digital divide, Pandemic, Structural inequalities
JEL Classification: D12, D83, D84, E31, E52, E58
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation