Facing the Covid-19 pandemic, World Health Organization (WHO) officials stressed the importance for countries to test, isolate and trace new cases to suppress the spread of the virus. As Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO director-general, stated, this must be the “backbone of the response in every country” and only countries that have used the “full package” of measures have been able to efficiently turn the tide against spread of the coronavirus1. Suppression is essential for buying time in three critical areas :

• developing new medicines to treat the infected and new vaccines to protect the population

• manufacturing much-needed equipment for personal protection, and

• designing responsive solutions to prevent epidemics spreading.

The Covid-19 crisis also reveals that personnel are both the most important and most vulnerable assets of companies, industries and public-service and government agencies. Suppression is an especially key challenge during the outbreak and the transition out of confinment phases for businesses and services. It requires extensive and new collaboration and coordination

between public and private organizations and new solutions designed by companies, as well as innovative and appropriate insights for the way forward.

Private and public sector entities are torn between the imperative to strictly follow personal hygiene and safety rules, enforced by stringent laws in some countries, and their critical challenge to maintain business continuity while ensuring the safety of their personnel. It is thus imperative to make it as convenient as possible for workforces to respect social distancing

1 https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/03/testing-tracing-backbone-who-coronavirus-wednesdays-briefing/

The logistical challenges of implementing effective Covid-19 disease suppression across widely varied work, school and public settings are unprecedented. LoRaWAN® Internet of Things (IoT) networks provide an effective, low-cost and anonymized answer to these contact-tracing challenges, without GPS and electronic devices such as smartphones.

Covid-19 Response: Anonymized Contact Tracing Solutions Powered by LoRaWAN®

“This virus is presenting as an unprecedented threat. We can come together against a common enemy, an enemy against humanity.”

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General

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May, 2020 | Version 1.0

Company name: MicroshareHeadquarters: Philadelphia, USAYear founded: 2013Industry sector: IoT Data Monetization

and avoid restricted areas and, at the same time, to ensure appropriate anonymous monitoring to prevent contagion and trace infected people interactions for preventive actions.

The importance of contact tracing in Covid-19 fighting

There is wide agreement that effective, close monitoring – known as contact tracing – is essential. The debate is more about how to achieve this and still protect individual privacy.

Contact tracing covers three key steps2 :

• Step 1 - Contact identification: once someone is confirmed as infected, the person’s activities in his or her workplace are analyzed to identify their activities and the people met since onset of their illness. The list of contacts could be extended to people beyond work colleagues if a broader solution is deployed, e.g. family members, friends and health-care providers.

• Step 2 - Contact listing: everyone considered to have contact with the infected person should be listed as contacts. Each of these people should then be informed of their contact status, what it means, the actions that will follow and the importance of receiving information about proactive prevention of the disease. Key steps also include appropriate behavior like quarantine or isolation if they met high-risk contacts, or even early care if they develop symptoms.

• Step 3 - Contact follow-up: regular follow-up should be conducted with all contacts to monitor for symptoms and test for signs of infection.

A Covid-19 contact-tracing solution for everyone

Factories, plants, warehouses, construction sites, mining and oil & gas sites, prisons, barracks, schools, hospitals health-care and elder-care facilities are many of the environments where smartphones and public apps are not a reliable solution. Often, people within these facilities either are prohibited from using a smartphone, may not own one or simply refuse to use one. Even those carrying smartphones on a regular basis may have disabled geo-tracking to protect their privacy or face limited battery capacity.

This means the smartphone-based contact tracing solutions being jointly spearheaded by Apple and Google and which have been so far adopted by many countries and companies may quickly prove less than totally effective, because of privacy concerns, field constraints and users behaviors. For many private and public sector use cases, a more comprehensive solution is required that does not rely on smartphones.

Microshare and Kerlink have combined their deep experience in indoor asset tracking within facilities and around ring-fenced properties to deliver a cost-effective contact tracking solution. It is based on industry-standard and battle-tested components, combining inexpensive Bluetooth beacons, cost-efficient long-range Wanesy™ Wave scanners and low-power industrial-grade indoor and outdoor Wirnet iSerie LoRaWAN® gateways and Wanesy™ Management Center core network and network management tools to collect and securely transfer the information.

2 Source: World Health Organization https://www.who.int/news-room/q-a-detail/contact-tracing

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Without relying on personal phones that raise privacy and reliability issues, Microshare’s Universal Contact Tracing™ solution, powered by Kerlink, can be deployed in weeks rather than months or years, with no need to design new hardware, install new complex networks or intrusive data-management systems. This solution runs entirely on a network separate from sensitive corporate databases and closes a loophole opened by systems relying on smartphones.

Permanent tracing of contacts exposure

Universal Contact Tracing™ delivers the outcomes recommended by the WHO (contact identification, listing and follow-up), in a very similar way to those proposed by the two smartphone operating-system giants, but with higher reliability, at a fraction of the cost and with far less complexity.

How it works :

• Staff, tenants and other people at risk are issued simple and inexpensive autonomous Bluetooth-enabled badges, key-rings or wristbands with a unique ID.

• When devices come in close proximity to each other, they scan and record each other’s ID through an encrypted code and regularly upload these “encounters” to a central database. This information is stored in a secure database that is searchable and auditable for historic patterns (ID contacts over time).

• Duly enabled government agencies, corporate-wellness and security officers, facility managers and other officials responsible for mitigating Covid-19 exposure can then identify the wearer of the device, thanks to its unique ID, and trace previous movements of people who subsequently test positive or who develop symptoms. Officials then can alert these people and anyone they were in contact with.

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Universal Contact Tracing™ High Level Data Flow

• Proximity Events’ recorded in employee devices will be transmi� ed to WanesyTM Wave Scanner -> LoRaWAN WirnetTM iSeries Gateway -> Microshare cloud.

• Only proximity events will be sent.

Client Environment

LoRaWAN Network

Server

Microshare API

IoT Hub

Kerlink Wanesy Management Centre

• Employee Bluetooth-enabled device scans for loca� on beacon and record dura� on.

• If the employee device has been in the same loca� on for a dura� on exceeding 10 minutes, then a proximity event will be created and stored in the device.

• Only device UID are recorded - No Pll informa� on.

• Data Received from Microshare network is processed and made available in JSON format as a RESTful API.

• Data can be stored and queried on the Microshare pla� orm or directly on client environment.

• Client is responsible for matching Employee Device UIDs with employee name in conformance with their own HR and data privacy policies. (GDPR compliant)

• Employee device scans for other employee device nearby and record distance and dura� on.

• If two or more devices have been close to each other (e.g. within 2 metres for 10 minutes) then a proximity event will be created and stored in employee beacon.

• Only devices UID are recorded - No Pll Informa� on is stored.

• Data from LoRaWAN Gateway is transmi� ed through Microshare Smart network (encrypted) via 4G/3G backhaul (independent from Client network) using Kerlink solu� ons.

• The data is «transient» in Microshare network. It is immediately transmi� ed to Client environment for further processing and then deleted.

Loca� on #1 Beacon

No Personally Identi fi able Informati on (PII) used. All recorded and transmitt ed data are device are User Identi fi er (UID)-based

Employee #2 BeaconEmployee #1 Beacon

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“Universal Contact Tracing™ can within days deliver the intelligence that enables infection risk mitigation and ensure full compliance with health recommendations, while bringing peace of mind to facility occupants and operators alike.”

Ron Rock - Microshare CEO

Covid-19 Anonymized Contact Tracing Solutions Benefits Summary

Designed over many years to be inter-operative with standard interfaces and widely deployed commercial data dashboards, Universal Contact Tracing™ ensures end-to-end security, privacy and reliability for the delivery of critical information where it’s needed. Universal Contact Tracing™ can be deployed quickly by non-technical staff. The data it produces is secure, GDPR compliant and delivered through Microshare’s patent-pending rules and sharing engine to only the right, designated people at the right time.

KERLINK CONTACT@KERLINK.COMLINKEDIN@KERLINK_NEWS

About : Kerlink : https://www.kerlink.com/

Microshare : https://www.microshare.io/

©Kerlink SA, 2020

YOUTUBE

Worker HealthNo Personal Information

RequiredNo GPS nor

Phone RequiredBusiness

Continuity Turnkey Solution

Monitor social distancing, contact ID and time of contact

exposure to trace contacts’ history

and mitigate virus spreading.

Proximity events with people and places

are recorded but no personal data nor

individual geolocation are available in the

application.

We use Bluetoothwristbands and

badges that are easy to deploy to thousands of employees and facility visitors.

Industries and work sites comply

with health recommendations,

mitigate infection risks for their staffs and

continue operations safely using a cost-efficient solution.

Easy and quick to deploy secure and

reliable solution combining individual

bracelets and an indoor network SaaS

application.