Kaavya Rekanar

University of Limerick | UL · Department of Computer Science and Information Systems (CSIS)

Objective This study aims to gather public opinion on the Irish “COVID Tracker” digital contact tracing (DCT) App, with particular focus on App usage, usability, usefulness, technological issues encountered, and potential changes to the App. Methods A 35-item online questionnaire was deployed for 10 days in October 2020, 3 months after the launch...

Background: Digital contact tracing apps have the potential to augment contact tracing systems and disrupt COVID-19 transmission by rapidly identifying secondary cases prior to the onset of infectiousness and linking them into a system of quarantine, testing, and health care worker case management. The international experience of digital contact tr...

BACKGROUND The silent transmission of COVID-19 has led to an exponential growth of fatal infections. With over 3 million deaths world-wide, the need to control and stem transmission has never been more critical. New COVID-19 vaccines offer hope. However, administration timelines, long-term protection, and effectiveness against variants are still un...

Background: The silent transmission of COVID-19 has led to an exponential growth of fatal infections. With over 4 million deaths world-wide, the need to control and stem transmission has never been more critical. New COVID-19 vaccines offer hope. However, administration timelines, long-term protection, and effectiveness against potential variants...

BACKGROUND Novel software applications (“Apps”) that can potentially simplify the laborious work of manual contact tracing during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic are a tempting prospect. Given this potential, many countries have designed, developed and deployed Apps before their efficacy has been established. The Irish health service launched the “CO...

Background Digital Contact Tracing is seen as a key tool in reducing the propagation of Covid-19. But it requires high uptake and continued participation across the population to be effective. To achieve sufficient uptake/participation, health authorities should address, and thus be aware of, user concerns. Aim This work manually analyzes user rev...

BACKGROUND Digital contact tracing apps (DCTAs) have the potential to augment contact tracing systems and disrupt Coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) transmission. Despite many countries deploying DCTAs, few have disrupted COVID-19 transmission sufficiently to avoid the most restrictive social distancing measures. OBJECTIVE Our aim was to describe and pro...

Contact Tracing (CT) is seen as a key tool in reducing the propagation of viruses, such as Covid-19. Given near ubiquitous societal usage of mobile devices, governments globally are choosing to augment manual CT with CT applications (CTAs) on smart phones. While a plethora of solutions have been spawned, their overall effectiveness is based on majo...

Digital Contact Tracing (DCT) is seen as a key tool in reducing the propagation of viruses such as Covid-19, but it requires uptake and participation in the technology across a large proportion of the population to be effective. While we observe the pervasive uptake of mobile device usage across our society, the installation and usage of contact tra...

Background: Contact tracing remains a critical part of controlling COVID-19 spread. Many countries have developed novel software applications (Apps) in an effort to augment traditional contact tracing methods. Aim: Conduct a national survey of the Irish population to examine barriers and levers to the use of a contact tracing App. Methods: Adu...

Background: Contact tracing remains a critical part of controlling the spread of COVID-19. Many countries have developed novel software applications (Apps) in an effort to augment traditional contact tracing methods. Aim: To conduct a national survey of the Irish population to examine barriers and levers to the use of a contact tracing App. Methods...