“Immuni” and the National Health System: Lessons Learnt from the COVID-19 Digital Contact Tracing in Italy

Since the early stage of the current pandemic, digital contact tracing (DCT) through mobile phone apps, called “Immuni”, has been introduced to complement manual contact tracing in Italy. Until 31 December 2021, Immuni identified 44,880 COVID-19 cases, which corresponds to less than 1% of total COVID-19 cases reported in Italy in the same period (5,886,411). Overall, Immuni generated 143,956 notifications. Although the initial download of the Immuni app represented an early interest in the new tool, Immuni has had little adoption across the Italian population, and the recent increase in its download is likely to be related to the mandatory Green Pass certification for conducting most daily activities that can be obtained via the application. Therefore, Immuni failed as a support tool for the contact tracing system. Other European experiences seem to show similar limitations in the use of DTC, leaving open questions about its effectiveness, although in theory, contact tracing could allow useful means of “proximity tracking”.

[1]  C. Poletto,et al.  Learning from the initial deployment of digital contact tracing apps , 2022, The Lancet Public Health.

[2]  F. Pecoraro,et al.  Open Data Resources on COVID-19 in Six European Countries: Issues and Opportunities , 2021, International journal of environmental research and public health.

[3]  V. von Wyl,et al.  ​The SwissCovid Digital Proximity Tracing App after one year: Were expectations fulfilled? , 2021, Swiss medical weekly.

[4]  Alessandro Blasimme,et al.  Digital Contact Tracing Against COVID-19 in Europe: Current Features and Ongoing Developments , 2021, Frontiers in Digital Health.

[5]  Mark Briers,et al.  The epidemiological impact of the NHS COVID-19 app , 2021, Nature.

[6]  S. Kelders,et al.  The Dutch COVID-19 Contact Tracing App (the CoronaMelder): Usability Study , 2021, JMIR formative research.

[7]  E. Marinelli,et al.  The COVID-19 pandemic and contact tracing technologies, between upholding the right to health and personal data protection. , 2021, European review for medical and pharmacological sciences.

[8]  Ciro Cattuto,et al.  Time to evaluate COVID-19 contact-tracing apps , 2021, Nature Medicine.

[9]  S. Kelders,et al.  The Dutch COVID-19 Contact Tracing App (the CoronaMelder): Usability Study , 2021, JMIR Formative Research.

[10]  M. Hernán,et al.  A population-based controlled experiment assessing the epidemiological impact of digital contact tracing , 2021, Nature communications.

[11]  A. Blom,et al.  Barriers to the Large-Scale Adoption of the COVID-19 Contact-Tracing App in Germany: Survey Study. , 2020, Journal of medical Internet research.

[12]  Michel Walrave,et al.  Adoption of a Contact Tracing App for Containing COVID-19: A Health Belief Model Approach , 2020, JMIR Public Health and Surveillance.

[13]  T. Callender,et al.  Automated and partly automated contact tracing: a systematic review to inform the control of COVID-19 , 2020, The Lancet Digital Health.

[14]  M. Walrave,et al.  Tracing the COVID-19 Virus: A Health Belief Model Approach to the Adoption of a Contact Tracing App. , 2020, JMIR public health and surveillance.

[15]  Eduardo Missoni,et al.  The Italian health system and the COVID-19 challenge , 2020, The Lancet Public Health.

[16]  Lucie Abeler-Dörner,et al.  Quantifying SARS-CoV-2 transmission suggests epidemic control with digital contact tracing , 2020, Science.