Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

Why many countries failed at COVID contact-tracing — but some got it right

Rich nations have struggled with one of the most basic and important methods for controlling infectious diseases.
  1. Dyani Lewis

    1. Dyani Lewis is a freelance science journalist in Melbourne, Australia.

    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed  Google Scholar

Healthcare workers wearing protective personal equipment examine a resident at his door

Health-care workers conduct contact-tracing amid the COVID-19 pandemic in Soyapango, El Salvador, in July. Credit: Jose Cabezas/Reuters

When Ebola ripped through communities in West Africa between 2014 and 2016, Tolbert Nyenswah saw at first hand how health workers extinguished the epidemic by finding and quarantining contacts of those who caught the disease. The former director of Liberia’s public-health institute thought contact-tracers would again rise to the challenge this year, keeping COVID-19 in check as it swept the globe. “Contact-tracing is one of the greatest tools that countries should deploy and use effectively to contain the outbreak,” he says.

Access options

Rent or buy this article

Prices vary by article type

from$1.95

to$39.95

Learn more

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Nature 588, 384-387 (2020)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-020-03518-4

Updates & Corrections

  • Correction 17 December 2020: An earlier version of this feature referred to the wrong guidance from the WHO on quarantining contacts in designated facilities. It should have referred to guidance issued in February, not August. The text and reference 4 have been updated accordingly. Furthermore, it erred in stating that the WHO declared COVID-19 a pandemic.

References

  1. Smith, L. E. et al. Public Health 187, 41–52 (2020).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  2. Lash, R. R. et al. Morb. Mortal. Wkly Rep. 69, 1360–1363 (2020).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  3. COVID-19 National Emergency Response Center. Osong Public Health Res. Perspect. 11, 60–63 (2020).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  4. World Health Organization. Considerations for Quarantine of Individuals in the Context of Containment for Coronavirus Disease: Interim Guidance, 29 February 2020 (WHO, 2020).

    Google Scholar 

  5. Sehgal, A. R., Himmelstein, D. U. & Woolhandler, S. Ann. Intern. Med. https://doi.org/10.7326/M20-4331 (2020).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Ferretti, L. et al. Science 368, eabb6936 (2020).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  7. Adam, D. C. et al. Nature Med. 26, 1714–1719 (2020).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  8. Jian, S.-W., Cheng, H.-Y., Huang, X.-T. & Liu, D.-P. Int. J. Infect. Dis. 101, 348–352 (2020).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  9. Institute of Global Health Innovation. COVID-19: Perceptions of Contact Tracing. Global Report (IGHI, 2020).

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Subjects

Latest on:

Nature Careers

Jobs

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing

Search

Advanced search

Quick links