Estimating the memory bottleneck for contact tracing

The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has highlighted the importance of contact tracing for epidemiological mitigation. Contact tracing interviews (CTIs) typically rely on episodic memory, which is prone to decline over time. Here, we provide a quantitative estimate of this decline for age- and gender-representative samples from the UK and Germany, emulating >15,000 CTIs. We find that the number of reported contacts declines as a power function of recall delay and is significantly higher for younger subjects and for those who used memory aids, such as a diary. We further find that these factors interact with delay: Older subjects and those who made no use of memory aids have steeper memory decline functions. These findings can inform epidemiological modelling and policies in the context of infectious diseases. notReviewed other