The History of Contact Tracing and the Future of Public Health.

The article traces the use of contact tracing for syphilis and gonorrhea, tuberculosis, HIV, Ebola and Covid-19 and the future of public health. Topics discussed include reason vulnerable communities have often viewed contact trading as both intrusive and dangerous, disease-specific variables that influence the efficacy of contact tracing, and opportunity offered by the Covid-19 to assess a variety of approaches to what has been broadly deemed 'contact tracing'.