Contact Tracing Versus Unknown Phone Numbers

Contact tracing is a key tool to stopping the coronavirus pandemic. Teams of medical detectives notify people when they’ve been exposed to COVID-19. This can help each person avoid passing the virus on to an additional set of contacts. This slows down the rate of transmission. 

In an analysis of the San Francisco tracing program, researchers found that contact tracing prevented 44% of transmissions from April through June 2020. Without this tool in place, the number of nationwide COVID-19 cases would have been higher. 

However, there’s a key issue that can thwart this necessary medical intervention—caller IDs displaying unknown numbers. 

Below, let’s look at the data about how many calls from contact tracers go unanswered and why contact tracing has become so difficult.