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. 2023 Mar:171:104994.
doi: 10.1016/j.ijmedinf.2023.104994. Epub 2023 Jan 13.

Digital contact tracing during the COVID-19 pandemic in France: Associated factors and reasons for non-use

Rajae Touzani  1 , Emilien Schultz  2 , Stéphanie Vandentorren  3 , Pierre Arwidson  3 , Francis Guillemin  4 , Anne-Déborah Bouhnik  5 , Alexandra Rouquette  6 , Julien Mancini  7
Affiliations

Digital contact tracing during the COVID-19 pandemic in France: Associated factors and reasons for non-use

Rajae Touzani et al. Int J Med Inform. 2023 Mar.

Abstract

Objectives: To estimate the proportion of users of the TousAntiCovid app(lication) and identify factors associated with its non-use for contact tracing.

Methods: We conducted an online survey of a quota sample of French adults between 8 and 18 January 2021. Three categories of TousAntiCovid use were considered: contact tracing, other or temporary usage, and no use. A weighted multiple logistic regression was performed to analyze the factors associated with these different uses.

Results: Among the 1000 respondents, 63.3% declared they had never downloaded the TousAntiCovid app, 23.5% used it for contact tracing. The remaining 13.2% did not enable contact tracing, mainly because of excessive battery consumption and fear of misuse of personal data. Trust in political representatives, financial deprivation and other factors were associated with never downloading the app.

Conclusion: This study confirms the previously suggested links between trust in political representatives, financial deprivation and the use of contact tracing apps in France.

Keywords: COVID-19; Contact tracing; HLS(19); Mobile app; Precarious people; TousAntiCovid.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Reasons for Bluetooth deactivation or uninstalling the tracing mobile app.
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Reasons for never downloading the tracing mobile app (N = 633).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

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    1. Statistiques application Tous AntiCovid n.d. http://www.appcovid.net/pages/tous-anticovid-et-applications-en-france/s... (accessed March 9, 2022).
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    1. Touzani R., Schultz E., Holmes S.M., Vandentorren S., Arwidson P., Guillemin F., et al. Early Acceptability of a Mobile App for Contact Tracing During the COVID-19 Pandemic in France: National Web-Based Survey. JMIR Mhealth Uhealth. 2021;9:e27768. - PMC - PubMed
    1. The HLS19 Consortium of the WHO Action Network M-POHL. International Report on the Methodology, Results, and Recommendations of the European Health Literacy Population Survey 2019-2021 (HLS19) of M-POHL. 2021.

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