As the quarantine is slowly lifted, US citizens are coming out of hibernation to a new public life with new social practices including maintaining a physical distance of at least six feet, working from home when possible, avoiding large gatherings and leaving your home only to access essential services like groceries and healthcare.
Contact Tracing’s Role in Public Safety
With this new phase comes a new strategy in the COVID-19 battle: contact tracing.
Never heard of it? You’re not the only one. But for decades, contact tracing has been used behind the pandemic battle scenes, an instrumental weapon against several deadly and debilitating communicable diseases including polio, smallpox, Ebola, and tuberculosis, protecting millions of lives around the world. How it works is that contact tracing identifies those who have been in contact with an infected person, tests them for infection, and then treats them if needed, finding and isolating cases before it spreads.
Contact Tracing on Your Current Device
To do our part in this battle, Scatterling has adapted its current technology and implemented a new contact tracing feature to its existing workers’ safety technology – without the addition of any other device or software – tracking and preventing the virus’ spread both efficiently and quickly. Currently, on their GPS-enabled smartphones, thousands of American workers are kept safe with Scatterling proven check-in monitoring service as well as GPS location + tracking, man-down, fall-detection, and panic-button features.
While using Scatterling’s existing technology, administrators in your business will have access to your worker’s location history. Administrators can review the worker’s location history and document the people and places they interacted with. Using Scatterling’s Business Intelligence feature, we are able to generate a list of all Scatterling device users and their interactions if a worker using Scatterling has been infected. Scatterling’s Business Intelligence tool will generate a report if the workers have come into contact with another worker within two meters. This comprehensive report is intended as an investigative tool rather than a definitive list, showing you the interactions of each worker. The results of this report can depend on the limitations of GPS and indoor location technology.
Identifying Potential Spreaders
Scatterling’s contact tracing feature can identify staff who are not regularly practicing recommended safety measures (six-foot distance), allowing you to proactively identify staff who are more at risk of spreading COVID-19 to their co-workers. By identifying these people, you can work with the individual directly, improving their practices and habits, eliminating the risk for infection amongst your team.
Identifying Potential High-infection Areas of Your Work
Our Business Intelligence feature can also help you identify areas at the workplace where high-risk interaction is taking place. Once you’ve identified these areas, you can then look at ways to eliminate the chance of infection before anyone gets sick.
Contact Tracing and Your Privacy
It is on these smartphones that contact tracing of COVID-19 will be enabled voluntarily with explicit consent and privacy from Scatterling users. The locations of users will not be tracked without the permission of the person using the service and device. The feature is designed to protect the privacy of the user and any collected location or health data will only be used for public health purposes.
Saving Valuable Time
Traditionally, contact tracing for viruses has been done manually, using the valuable time of public health professionals and volunteers. With so many Americans increasing contact with each other in the coming months, the hours required to perform contact tracing will increase considerably. Scatterling’s automated contact tracing feature will exponentially save time for health professionals – time that can be used to treat sick Americans.
The Answer Is Yes!
Protect your team and your community: In addition to preventing the spread of COVID-19 amongst your team, this new feature will also help stop the spread in our communities. Employing Scatterling and its contact tracing capabilities stops the spread to those not in your workplace, helping flatten the virus curve.
Contact Tracing Updates
For more information on contact tracing in the US, visit the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s website.