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Contact tracing has transformed public health and epidemiology since its inception. The most recent advances have to do with the use of mobile phone data. The 2014 Ebola outbreak and 2015 MERS outbreak shaped South Korea's and some other Asian countries' experience with a major viral outbreak. The use of mobile phones and tracing someone's whereabouts was used under powers issued to the government. This experience helped South Korea and other east Asian countries pioneer the use of such data to track how individuals movements may affect the transmission of an infectious disease. While this was used initially in the Ebola and MERS outbreaks, the use in the 2020 COVID-19 outbreak proved essential for South Korea, China, and other east Asian countries in limiting the overall impact of COVID-19. While the use of mobile data for Western states is only now being applied, it also remains controversial given concerns over location data and personal data sharing with government authorities. Nevertheless, it is clear from the history of contact tracing, even without the use of mobile phones, tracking someone's whereabouts and the likely community in which they could spread infection to is critical in reducing infection rates. The example of syphilis, cholera, tuberculosis, and smallpox all demonstrate this even without the use of mobile phones.<ref>For more on recent contact tracing technology and application, see: Mittelstadt, Daniel Brent. <i>The Ethics of Biomedical Big Data</i>. New York, NY: Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2016, pg. 26.</ref>
Admin moved page What is the History of Contact Tracing? to What is the History of Contact Tracing
====Recent Developments====
[[File:smallpox-news.png|thumb|left|Figure 2. Smallpox was eradicated in large part due to contact tracing efforts by the WHO.]]
Contact tracing in the late 19th century was mostly related to the large-scale public health crises such as cholera or tuberculosis outbreaks. However, increasingly medical science in the early 20th century realized contact tracing has a positive effect on other forms of infections. Sexually transmitted diseases, which were not well studied prior to the early 20th century, increasingly were treated similar to other infectious disease. In Scotland and UK, during World War I and after, venereal disease became a public health concern. When contact tracing was deployed, it created many problems for those who were seen as passing the infections, mainly women, and the authorities. While initially in In the 1920s and 1930s, contact tracing for venereal disease became common. Unfortunately, instead of using contact tracing for only public health reasons, it was seen as a way for the instead used by authorities to track criminal activity such as well prostituion. Additionally, it was used as a way to socially ostracise individuals, public . Public health officials began to see the problem with this approach change course in the 1930s and 1940s. Instead of emphasizing policy goals outside of public health, focusing health officials switched a more robust focus on conducting detailed interviews with infected individuals and reconstructing the sexual history of individuals so that a more clear history of transmission could be developed. This effort was seen as vital given that during the war years in the 1940s could have led to a more rapid spread because of disease with the presence of more foreign and domestic soldiers in the UK during the period between 1940-1944World War II. Nevertheless, contact tracing focusing on such disease often focused on restricting still restricted movements by infected or likely to be infected women, which was seen as the best way to prevent the spread of infection. In the United States, in the late 1930s syphilis was seen as a potential public health threat and the surgeon general . The United States Surgeon General ,Thomas Parran , promoted contact tracing as a way to prevent its syphilis's spread. SimilarlyInitially, initially the program was difficult to accept socially and was also seen as a way for the authorities to control specific individuals, but by the late 1940s more controlled interviews and use of penicillin, that is penicillin distributed to people likely to get syphilis as well as those who had it, proved to be more successful. Rather than isolating individuals or publicly shaming themthe earlier, the program simply distributed people in an area who could likely spread the infectionblunter and more stigmatizing approach. This These efforts helped to rapidly diminish the number of syphilis cases by the 1950s in wide areas of the United States.<ref>For more on how venereal disease began to use contact tracing and controversies around this, see: Aral, Sevgi O., ed. <i>Behavioral Interventions for Prevention and Control of Sexually Transmitted Diseases</i>. 1. softcover print. New York, NY: Springer, 2008. </ref>
Perhaps the most successful example of using contact tracing to diminish the effects of a disease is the example of smallpox, which was mostly eradicated by 1980 (Figure 2). This was mainly due to efforts of contact tracing, by isolating and treating infected individuals, and then also focus immunization efforts for people nearby, thereby focusing available resources to those who most urgently need immunization. The World Health Organization (WHO) perhaps established one of the largest contact tracing programs that now focused on the entire world. From the 1950s-1970s, contact tracing was used in developed and developing countries, where teams of volunteers, doctors, and individuals would go and interview people to determine the likely place in which an outbreak was present. This helped to track all major areas of smallpox that eventually led to its near eradication. The combination of a vaccine and contact tracing made this among the most successful, large-scale WHO efforts.<ref>For more on the success of smallpox contact tracing, see: McGuire-Wolfe, Christine. <i>Foundations of Infection Control and Prevention</i>. Burlington, MA: Jones & Bartlett Learning, 2018, pg. 11. </ref>
====Impact of Contact Tracing====Contact tracing has transformed public health and epidemiology since its inception. The most recent advances have to do with the use of mobile phone data. The 2014 Ebola outbreak and 2015 MERS outbreak shaped South Korea's and some other Asian countries' experience with a major viral outbreak. The use of mobile phones and tracing someone's whereabouts was used under powers issued to the government. This experience helped South Korea and other east Asian countries pioneer the use of such data to track how individuals movements may affect the transmission of an infectious disease. While this was used initially in the Ebola and MERS outbreaks, the use in the 2020 COVID-19 outbreak proved essential for South Korea, China, and other east Asian countries in limiting the overall impact of COVID-19. While the use of mobile data for Western states is only now being applied, it also remains controversial given concerns over location data and personal data sharing with government authorities. Nevertheless, it is clear from the history of contact tracing, even without the use of mobile phones, tracking someone's whereabouts and the likely community in which they could spread the infection is critical in reducing infection rates.
====Summary====
