Shelly Banjo

Photographer: Qilai Shen/Bloomberg
To slow down any virus, it’s important to interrupt person-to-person transmission. Officials in China have used a mix of high- and low-tech methods to find and monitor people who may have been exposed to the virus, which has infected more than 77,600 and killed upwards of 2,600 in the country as of Feb. 24. Authorities have sourced data from phone carriers and called on private tech companies to set up virtual health hotlines in order to trace everyone who’s been in or near Hubei province, home to Wuhan, the epicenter of the outbreak. They’ve also activated an extensive network of Communist Party members and community groups, encouraging citizens to monitor neighbors’ vital signs and whereabouts.
A 25-year-old who studies in Wuhan told Bloomberg News he was surprised when officials found him about 300 miles (482 kilometers) north in his hometown of Henan. The postgraduate student, who asked not to be named because he feared police retaliation, left Wuhan in early January. Two weeks later, a Henan police officer called, saying he suspected the student had visited the seafood market where the virus is thought to have originated and asked if the student was feeling all right. Soon, the student was overwhelmed

Photographer: Peter Martin/Bloomberg
Tencent Holdings Ltd.’s
The system, in use at offices, malls, and subways, scans people seeking to enter and allows or denies them access based on their ratings. Provinces including Hubei are requiring anyone selling cough or fever treatments to report the buyers’ identities to the government, and plan to use purchase data to find people who might be ill.

Photographer: Qilai Shen/Bloomberg
Since late January, spreadsheets and lists identifying people living in or returning home from Wuhan have been circulating around social media, including Weibo. A Wuhan resident included in one of the lists says he recently received an influx of strange calls. The resident, who asks to remain anonymous to prevent further harassment, says he quarantined himself alone at home for 14 days because his parents both tested positive for the virus. His mother recovered after spending four days in the hospital, while his father remained

Photographer: Qilai Shen/Bloomberg
In
recent weeks, China has turned to low-tech tactics. Across the country,
scores of neighborhood committee members have been deployed to take
people’s temperatures each day and record their whereabouts. Earlier
this month, a group of young women in red down jackets and flimsy
surgical masks went door-to-door in Beijing’s Shichahai neighborhood
with clipboards to record residents’ temperatures, ID numbers, and
recent travel. One, a party member who said she oversees 500 households,
told a Bloomberg reporter that as a disease prevention measure, the
community would now restrict outsiders from entering—including grocery
deliverymen—on orders “from above.”
The panic and fear that blanket surveillance creates could actually undermine efforts to contain the epidemic. China had come under criticism for silencing doctors in Wuhan who suspected the virus was serious early on, and the suspicion facing people thought to be potentially ill could discourage the transparency needed to engender trust and fight an epidemic, says Stuart Hargreaves, a law professor at Chinese University of Hong Kong who researches surveillance and privacy issues. “If you had an approach that encouraged the reporting of ‘negative’ information, rather than punishing it, then this outbreak might have been limited at a much earlier point,” he says.
The panic and fear that blanket surveillance creates could actually undermine efforts to contain the epidemic. China had come under criticism for silencing doctors in Wuhan who suspected the virus was serious early on, and the suspicion facing people thought to be potentially ill could discourage the transparency needed to engender trust and fight an epidemic, says Stuart Hargreaves, a law professor at Chinese University of Hong Kong who researches surveillance and privacy issues. “If you had an approach that encouraged the reporting of ‘negative’ information, rather than punishing it, then this outbreak might have been limited at a much earlier point,” he says.

Photographer: Qilai Shen/Bloomberg
It’s
also not clear that the use of mass surveillance will be effective.
While it might seem useful to have full oversight of citizens’ movements
and vital signs, making use of data of that scale requires manpower and
training that China’s police force lacks, says Suzanne Scoggins, an
assistant professor at Clark University. Scoggins, who researches
policing and authoritarian control in China, says tracing the spread of a
virus is different from tracking the movements of dissidents or
criminals. “This is still relatively new technology that is likely being
used in a way that is different from its original design,” Scoggins
says. “It may help some, but we shouldn’t expect it to contain an
outbreak.”
Blanket surveillance is different from so-called contact tracing, a practice that goes back centuries to map a disease’s spread, most famously when Dr. John Snow used it to find the source of the 1854 cholera outbreak in London—a water pump. The usefulness of high-tech surveillance tools will be limited until officials identify the incubation period of the newcoronavirus and develop rapid
diagnostic tests and effective treatment, says Jessica Justman,
associate professor of medicine in epidemiology at Columbia University
and senior technical director of its global public health center, ICAP.
Without a better understanding, “it’s going to make it much harder to
effectively use the kind of cellphone and other data people are
imagining,” says Justman, who has gone door-to-door across Africa,
testing people for HIV to map its spread and provide them with treatment
options.
Blanket surveillance is different from so-called contact tracing, a practice that goes back centuries to map a disease’s spread, most famously when Dr. John Snow used it to find the source of the 1854 cholera outbreak in London—a water pump. The usefulness of high-tech surveillance tools will be limited until officials identify the incubation period of the new

Photographer: Qilai Shen/Bloomberg

Photographer: Qilai Shen/Bloomberg
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