CWA should enable contact tracing for Monkeypox Virus

[pkreissel]

Current Implementation

CWA only enables contact tracing of SARS 2.

Suggested Enhancement

On positive Test with monkeypox patients should be able to upload their test results and warn their contacts in the past weeks.

Expected Benefits

Often monkeypox is diagnosed in late stage, which makes it all the more crucial to have a log of potential contacts. They could then report for testing or booster vaccination.

[Ein-Tim]

CWA uses the COVID-19 exposure notification framework from Google & Apple. I don't think they'd allow such an extension.

[pkreissel]

I See no reason why they wouldn't allow it. Of course it is not allowed yet, but I guess Apple and Google should agree that its a good idea.

[pkreissel]

I guess it would even be possible right now to just "switch" to monkeypox contact tracing, the only thing that's not supported is parallel tracing for multiple viruses.

[pkreissel]

But that would be a good thing even without considering monkeypox. E.g. we should have stronger warnings when someone has Delta-Variant in comparison to Omicron Variant. New variants might evolve in the next months that could also use this feature.

[Ein-Tim]

@pkreissel

Sub-Variants of Sars-CoV-2 are no problem, stronger warnings for higher transmitsble varianst can be achieved by allowing laboratories to submit the type of variant together with the test result & then adjusting the warning parameters / risk mapping (another new feature proposal).

From what I am seeing Apple & Google seem to have lost interest in the GAEN framework and don't plan any extension. Answering simple questions (corona-warn-app/cwa-app-ios#1731) takes more than a year & E-Mails to Googles email address for contact tracing apps seem to be left unanswered.

I could only imagine Apple & Google opening the framework to monkeypox if this poses a similar thread to the public health as COVID-19 did (at the beginning of the pandemic).

But I'm happy if proven wrong. As you said, without Apple & Googles approval such a feature can't be implemented.