JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has forced drastic changes to daily life, from the implementation of stay-at-home orders to mandating facial coverings and limiting in-person gatherings. While the relaxation of these control measures has varied geographically, it is widely agreed that contact tracing efforts will play a major role in successful re-openings of businesses and schools. As the volume of positive cases has increased in the United States, it has become clear that there is room for digital health interventions to assist in contact tracing.

Objective:

The goal of this study was to evaluate the use of a mobile-friendly web-application designed to supplement manual COVID-19 contact tracing efforts on a university campus. Here, we present the results of a development and validation study centered around the use of the MyCOVIDKey application on the Vanderbilt University campus during the summer of 2020.

Methods:

We performed a six-week pilot study in the Stevenson Center Science and Engineering Complex on Vanderbilt University’s campus in Nashville, TN. Graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, faculty, and staff over the age of 18 who worked in Stevenson Center and had access to a mobile phone were eligible to register for a MyCOVIDKey account. All users were encouraged to complete regular self-assessments of COVID-19 risk and to “key-in" to sites by scanning a location-specific barcode.

Results:

Between June 17, 2020 and July 29, 2020, 45 unique participants created MyCOVIDKey accounts. These users performed 227 self-assessments and 1410 key-ins. Self-assessments were performed by 89% of users, 71% of users keyed-in, and 48 unique locations (of 71 possible locations) were visited. Overall, 89% of assessments were determined to be low-risk (i.e., asymptomatic with no known exposures), and these assessments yielded a “CLEAR” status. The remaining self-assessments received a status of “NOT CLEAR”, indicating either risk of exposure or symptoms suggestive of COVID-19 (7·5% and 3·5% of self-assessments were moderate- and high-risk, respectively). These 25 instances came from eight unique users, and in 19 of these instances, the at-risk user keyed-in to a location on campus.

Conclusions:

Digital contact tracing tools may be useful in assisting organizations to identify persons at risk of COVID-19 through contact tracing, or in locating places that may need to be cleaned or disinfected after being visited by an index case. Incentives to continue to use such tools can improve uptake, and their continued usage increases utility to both organizational- and public-health efforts. Parameters of digital tools, including MyCOVIDKey, should ideally be optimized to supplement existing contact tracing efforts. These tools represent a critical addition to manual contact tracing efforts during reopening and sustained regular activity.