Fundamentals of Functioning of Global Contact Monitoring Systems in the Context of COVID-19 Spread Prevention

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has a clear potential for a prolonged global pandemic, high mortality and overload of health systems. Until vaccines become widely available, the only available approaches to infection prevention are case isolation, contact and quarantine tracking, physical distancing, decontamination, and hygiene measures. The paper considers the conceptual principles of combining the bases of transparency and confidentiality of personal life and the need to track personal contacts, substantiates the need for such a combination and provides a possible technical solution using blockchain technology. The practical development and deployment of the system based on such protocols will allow each citizen to track the personal history of probable contact with infected persons or other potential risks (including deciding on the need for self-isolation or additional examination). In this case, the decentralized system guarantees the privacy of such information both for each participant (due to the inability to determine the personal data of a potentially infected person) and for the system as a whole.