The Signal: Searches for "contact tracing" have skyrocketed as countries use smartphone data to curb the spread of COVID-19. Some view it as the key to lifting quarantines; others, as a threat to personal privacy. We wanted to explore this landscape from a new angle: How will this technology impact businesses and their owners?
Traditional contact tracing involves identifying everyone exposed to an infected patient, alerting them, and separating them from the rest of society before they can spread a disease further. It was crucial in identifying the true source of London’s cholera outbreak in the mid-1800s, and has played a role in addressing measles, HIV, SARS, H1N1, Ebola, and other health crises.
Contact tracing typically requires extensive patient interviews, and is labor intensive and imprecise. Google and Apple have teamed up to modernize the practice by enabling bluetooth connections to track when 2 phones are near one another. This new functionality would allow health departments to create apps that could quickly identify and alert anyone who had been close to an infected patient within the last few weeks. While they’re limiting access to the API to public health authorities in each country, together Google and Apple represent 99% of all smartphone sales, making their reach effectively global.
While some say this is a temporary change designed to help fight the COVID-19 pandemic, the likelihood is that this functionality is here to stay. Contact tracing is crucial for managing other diseases, and is currently required by law for anyone diagnosed with TB. Given the time and cost savings this technology could offer, it’s unlikely to be turned off once it’s on.
With that in mind, what kinds of changes might businesses see?
Increased Demand for Privacy: For some, contact tracing is just one more thing (like location tracking) they’re happy to let their phones do. But this may push others to pay more attention to their digital privacy.
Amazon searches for "Faraday Bags" -- bags made of conductive metal fibers, which block out cellular, data, WiFi, and bluetooth signals to make a device harder to hack or track -- have risen 30% over the last 90 days, with 10k+ searches per month.
One seller, Silent Pocket, is currently moving about 300 faraday phone sleeves per month on Amazon, according to the search tool Jungle Scout. Their Light Grey Nylon ($69.95) is their best seller, accounting for 51% of sales. With FBA fulfillment fees ($2.41), referral fees ($10.49), and an estimated procurement cost of $4.40, the per-unit profit is $52.65, translating to ~$15k profit/month for all phone sleeves.
Their patent might offer ideas for new improvements to the design. For example, one reviewer was slightly disappointed that, of the 2 pockets, only one offered signal-blocking abilities. Reviewers of other faraday bags have wished for versions that were easier to access, could be hung on a lanyard, or were more pet-friendly.
Small Business Clean-Up: While the CDC offers some basic guidelines for how businesses should decontaminate, there’s little info on who owners can trust to do the work.
"In Oklahoma and Texas, after a hailstorm, there are suddenly a lot of so-called roofing contractors," Jeff Jones, founder of BioSheen, a certified bio-forensic crime-scene cleaning company, told Bisnow. "Anyone can say they are a professional."
The takeaway for entrepreneurs is simple: In addition to an increased demand for knowledgeable cleaning companies, there may be a need for credentialing companies offering COVID-19 remediation training (e.g., which specialized chemicals to use on which surfaces), as well as review websites that help business owners find and schedule cleaners they can trust.
Businesses will need help cleaning up their reputations, too. While the identities of people who are infected are (ideally) never revealed, their travel history often is. Singapore, for example, keeps a public list of all infection hotspots. South Korea sent text messages to citizens, offering detailed reports on the places coronavirus patients visited, sometimes down to the minute.
This can lead to negative attention for businesses, which can be hard to overcome.
"People are avoiding places that an infected person has visited," epidemiologist Sung-il Cho told Nature Research, "even though the places have been closed and cleaned since then."
If contact tracing is implemented at scale, there may be a need for specialized marketing, SEO, and PR services, as well as courses and content designed to help small business owners manage their public perception after being linked to the virus.
The Pandemic-Proof Workforce: Even if contact tracing technology helps re-open the economy, employers will continue to face new logistical challenges with the ongoing management of employees.
The interesting thing about this new era of contact tracing is that a person doesn’t have to get sick in order to be caught up in its dragnet. They only need to be close enough to a sick person long enough for their devices to communicate.
How will this change the way we work? How does liability change when employees have the technology to prove they were exposed to a virus while on the clock? How do you design an office or a place of business in order to minimize actual exposure to the virus, as well as the digital footprint of each person in the building?
For that matter, how do you staff a business when, on any given day, a random subset of your employees can suddenly receive orders on their phone to self-isolate for 2 weeks?
Many of these questions are still seeking answers, and the stakes are high. The inability to keep a company fully staffed can have extreme consequences for entire countries, as things like US meat production become destabilized by absenteeism. Trash collectors are also having a hard time staffing in some cities, and despite offices around the country being closed, ZipRecruiter saw a 75% spike in postings for cleaning crews.
Employers in these and other industries may seek dedicated freelance talent platforms, or even a marketplace to share staff between companies, along with software to manage scheduling, time off, and payment, to help cope with the fits and starts of staffing in a pandemic-stressed world.