Covid-19 is a complex virus that can be transmitted between people without even manifesting symptoms on the part of the carrier, according to experts.

Swift measures such as contact tracing are hence crucial in order to rapidly identify cases and their contacts to prevent resurgence.

Contact tracing is the process of identification of persons who may have come into contact with an infected person and subsequent collection of further information about these contacts.

According to Muhammed Semakula, a health scientific innovation analyst at Rwanda Biomedical Centre (RBC), this exercise is always effective in case of cluster transmission and useful in case of community transmission.

He said that contact tracing helped slow down the virus transmission in communities especially from March to July 2020, which helped the joint taskforce on Covid-19 and the Ministry of Health strengthen capacity of controlling the spread of the virus in Rwanda.

Digital innovations

Rwanda adopted the use of digital tools to trace cases and their contacts and most of these are home-developed, Semakula explained.

"We have developed an information system that easily enables to identify people who have been in contact with positive cases using artificial intelligence algorithms.

In addition to early detection strategies that are implemented by Covid-19 surveillance and response teams, we are able to map the suspects,” he said.

Gilbert Mutimura, managing director of Driving Innovation Technology, the innovators of Ikaze, a smart visitor and employee management system that has been developed to provide digital-based solutions to secure premises accessed by visitors or employees, said digital solutions have been key in the fight against the virus.

Their product is a contactless technology that enables visitors to check in at the premise without having to touch anything.

This is part of the efforts put in place to facilitate tracing of people who have been at that facility in the event a case is registered there.

The software also helps public and private entities to keep track of visitors or staff so as to know who is on premise at all times.

"Specifically, amidst the fight against Covid-19, it provides a big time solution by taking away pen and paper log books which may be a means to spread the virus and other hygiene problems. So as we fight this pandemic and hope for a cure, we are encouraged that Ikaze will stay relevant even after it is done,” he said.

Challenges

Eugene Mugisha, who owns a restaurant and bar in Kicukiro District, says though contact tracing has been evidently relevant in curbing the pandemic, most people were finding it hard to adhere to these regulations, especially in the beginning.

This he said complicated the entire process adding however that with time, people began to slowly adjust.

"At first clients didn’t want to use it, they would be in a hurry and even when we told them about it they would ignore. So I devised means of employing bouncers at the entrance and it has helped somehow,” he said.

"For now, we have not registered any case of coronavirus at the restaurant but I believe contact tracing is a good way of tracing infected people. It is effective in curbing the spread of coronavirus,” he added.

Objections on the side of service providers have emerged too especially in terms of bearing costs incurred particularly in the installation and maintenance of these digital solutions. 

Mutimura said some clients such as restaurants believe that their customers could pay for the service and hence a small fee could be added to the bill to foot the cost of the app.

"For public institutions, they suggest that a government decision obliging them to use smart means that could help eradicate pen and paper and whose data is securely stored (servers managed from reliable developers) would make them buy the service easily,” he revealed.

Semakula explained that some of the challenges affecting the efficiency of contact tracing are mainly linked to inaccurate information provided by clients or recorded wrongly in the system.

This, he said slows down the real time of action and this might end up increasing the spread of virus.

With multiple systems in place however, Semakula revealed that they are using more than one source of information to validate the details provided by clients.

"All institutions are required to record everyone visiting those particular institutions. However, institutions are using different approaches; some are digital others are logbooks. This has implication on contact tracing. So far RBC is working on a system that can be used by all institutions to enable easy tracing of suspects.”