“There’s an analogy to Facebook’s rollout,” said Joanna Masel, a mathematical biologist and professor in the department of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Arizona. “We’re starting on college campuses. It is useful to focus on these communities and on places where there is trust, achieve high uptake and spread from there.”
To that end, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have shown interest in Dr. Masel’s pioneering contribution to the contact tracing and exposure app being deployed at the University of Arizona. The app, known as Covid Watch and developed on a platform built by Apple and Google, anonymously tracks students’ movements using Bluetooth technology; those who download the app will be notified if they have been in proximity to someone who has tested positive.
Dr. Masel built in an algorithm that seeks to gauge how infectious a student was at the time contact was made with others — a determination made by looking at when symptoms first appeared. Using that data, the algorithm can calculate how much risk was posed to other students depending on when they were exposed to the infected student and for how long. Students at the highest risk of exposure will be asked to quarantine and get tested.