This rich and documented feature article first discusses the multiplicity of surveillance systems that contribute to making the virus, its spread and the movements of the population visible.
The first challenge is to "identify the carriers of the virus and count the number of sick people, which are the first health surveillance operations required to manage an epidemic. The production of these data is the result of a long and fragile chain in which many actors intervene". Produced by a multiplicity of actors, the author reminds us that screening data are based on " heterogeneous conventions depending on the technical methods used for screening and the purposes pursued. This exploration of the methods used to produce the number of confirmed cases calls for vigilance regarding the measures that will be put in place to manage the post-containment period. The systems mobilized to detect contaminated individuals inevitably contain biases. However, this sensitive information can have important effects on individual and collective freedoms.The second issue in the production of data is the understanding of the circulation processes of the virus. " Making the spatial spread of the virus visible serves several purposes for which the type and granularity of the data will vary: understanding the characteristics of the spatial spread of the virus (how the virus spreads), predicting the next affected areas and anticipating the implementation of appropriate sanitary measures (where the virus spreads), and identifying people who have been in contact with the virus to allow for early and targeted quarantine of specific populations (who the virus is likely to infect).
The third issue is the mobilization of technological monitoring devices "to monitor public compliance with containment measures": documentation of travel authorizations and identification of non-compliance with containment.
The choice of monitoring systems, " recalls its author, Antoine Courmont, in his conclusion,"is part of the institutional, technical, social and economic trajectories of each country. (...) The responses to a given problem are always multiple and situated. Technological surveillance systems are only one instrument among others, whose contributions and limitations in a given situation need to be clarified and debated so that their use is legitimate.This article is composed of four parts:
- [intro] Surveillance systems and management of the epidemic
- Screening the population, making the virus visible
- From epidemiological models to contact tracing, making contagion visible
- Make visible the (non) respect of containment
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