Toward Crowd-Sourced and Anonymous Contact Tracing [Funder: Carleton University COVID-19 Rapid Research Response Grants]

This project will develop a database of social events and gatherings attended by people potentially infected with COVID-19, in order to trace the spread of disease and focus testing on those most likely to be infected. Contact tracing has proven to be useful for reducing the spread of disease and could be instrumental in re-opening the economy. The database must be developed in a very short time frame so it can be presented to interested stakeholders - such as healthcare providers and software companies - as soon as possible and adopted for immediate use. Once the system is deemed useful and usable, future developments include the ability to automatically populate the database by hooking onto existing contact apps that will detect and identify large gatherings where contact has taken place, such as sporting events, concerts, and religious gatherings, as a means of preventing community spread.