Summary
In March, COVID-19 descended on the United States, and 47.9 million schoolchildren began to log on to Zoom for classes from their living rooms. Now, there is an active debate over whether schools should re-open in-person instruction. We do not address that issue, but the crucial question of how school that choose to reopen will use technology to combat the spread of COVID-19.
Too many schools are looking to location-tracking technologies to solve the COVID-19 crisis. But these technologies run the risk of leading schools to lead the public into a false sense of security, encouraging unwise risks while also detracting from the necessary investment in evidence-based public health measures.
Alternatives exist to these technology-dependent solutions: among them, manual contact tracing with culturally competent interviews. With young children, this is an enormous proposition, but the only evidence-based public health solution. The temptation to solve COVID-19 with smartphone apps or wearable technologies is understandable, but instead we must harness the power of humans to establish trust-based dialogues within their own communities in order to stop the spread of COVID-19. Without such an investment, student transmission and the subsequent community spread will become yet another metric of American inequity.
