![]() ![]() As of May 2021, Europe alone has had more than 31 million cases and 700 thousand deaths according to the most recent estimates of the European Center for Disease Control and Prevention ( 2). Worldwide, 163 million people have tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 and 3.38 million have lost their life to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) ( 1). The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic is a public health challenge of unprecedented scale. These developments signal a shift from a strict interpretation of data minimization and purpose limitation toward a more expansive approach to digital contact tracing in Europe, calling for careful scrutiny and appropriate oversight. In particular, the most recently released apps tend to offer users more granular information about risk in specific locations, and to collect data about user whereabouts, in order to enhance retrospective contact tracing capacity. Our study highlights that while privacy and data protection are at the core of contact tracing apps in Europe, countries differ in their technical protocols, and in their capacity to utilize collected data beyond proximity tracing alone. To enable policymakers to harness the full potential of digital health tools against SARS-CoV-2, this paper examines the evolution of digital contact tracing in eight European countries. However, as the second wave of SARS-CoV-2 sweeps the continent, digital contact tracing in Europe is evolving in terms of both technological and governance features. In Europe, after intense discussion about privacy-related risks involving policymakers, technology experts, information technology companies, and-albeit to a limited extent-the public at large, technical protocols were created to support the development of privacy-compatible proximity tracing apps. ![]() In the midst of the first wave of the pandemic, governments worldwide introduced digital contact tracing systems as part of a strategy to contain the spread of the virus. Health Ethics and Policy Lab, Department of Health Sciences and Technology, ETH Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland. ![]() Alessandro Blasimme * †, Agata Ferretti † and Effy Vayena ![]()
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