As some provinces eye plans to revive their economies from a pandemic-induced coma, one part of the puzzle remains elusive: swift and accurate contact tracing.
The federal and provincial governments are working behind the scenes on a digital approach to the laborious task of tracking patients who have tested positive for the virus that causes COVID-19 — but a patchwork of apps across the country could lead to low uptake numbers and poor data.
Federal, provincial and territorial public health officers held their regular conference call earlier this week. This one was dominated by a discussion about contact tracing, according to a provincial official who was briefed on the call but is not authorized to speak publicly about it.
While Innovation Minister Navdeep Bains has said the federal government is working with several tech companies on a potential solution, the job of tracking cases falls within provincial jurisdiction.
At least two provinces — Ontario and British Columbia — are pursuing vendors for their own apps, said the source, while other provinces are evaluating their own solutions.
And at least one Canadian city is looking to move ahead on its own. Earlier this week, the Ottawa Board of Health passed a motion to allow Ottawa Public Health to start looking into technology to support contact tracing.
Vera Etches, Ottawa’s medical officer of health, said she wants to work with a third-party developer to customize an existing application to perform digital contact tracing — to speed up the process and take some of the burden off those who do the work.
Developers say one app the best solution
Alán Aspuru-Guzik, a professor of chemistry and computer science at the University of Toronto, is talking to some provinces about MyTrace, an app being developed out of the Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence.
“When you download the app, what you’re going to start doing is voluntarily recalling your own trajectory in GPS … Whenever you’re running into a person, you will exchange anonymized Bluetooth keys and then you will know you were close to a person,” he said.
WATCH | Minister Bains on contact tracing concerns
Innovation Minister Navdeep Bains says the federal government is working with tech companies on a possible tech approach to contact tracing, although the job of tracking COVID-19 cases falls within provincial jurisdiction. 1:15
“Let’s say this person gets sick and then now the contact tracing authorities ask the person, ‘Would you be willing to provide an anonymous version of your trajectory to the health authorities?’ That’s a voluntary thing. And the person will then provide this trajectory.”
Vector has been in discussions with several provinces. Aspuru-Guzik said he’d like to see one app used across the country.
“Ideally, we should have one Canadian app. This is just the problem that we are a federation and there’s a lot of moving pieces,” he said.
“It’s less than ideal that there is more than one app potentially being rolled out.”‘
