The spread of the COVID-19 virus continues to increase fatality rates and exhaust the capacity of healthcare providers. Efforts to prevent transmission of the virus among humans remains a high priority. The current efforts to quarantine involve social distancing, monitoring and tracking the infected patients. However, the spread of the virus is too rapid to be contained only by manual and inefficient human contact tracing activities. To address this challenge, we have developed Connect, a blockchain empowered digital contact tracing platform that can leverage information on positive cases and notify people in their immediate proximity which would thereby reduce the rate at which the infection could spread. This would particularly be effective if sufficient people use the platform and benefit from the targeted recommendations. The recommendations would be made in a privacy-preserving fashion and contain the spread of the virus without the need for an extended period of potential lockdown.

Connect is an identity wallet platform which will keep user digital identities and user activity trace data on a blockchain platform using Self-Sovereign Identity(SSI) proofs. User activities include the places he/she has travelled, the country of origin he/she came from, travel and dispatch updates from the airport etc. With these activity trace records, Connect platform can easily identify suspected patients who may be infected with the COVID-19 virus and take precautions before spreading it. By storing digital identities and activity trace records on blockchain-based SSI platform, Connect addresses the common issues in centralized cloud-based storage platforms (e.g. lack of data immutability, lack of traceability).

COVID-19 病毒的传播继续增加死亡率并耗尽医疗保健提供者的能力。努力防止病毒在人与人之间传播仍然是当务之急。目前的隔离措施包括保持社交距离、监测和追踪感染患者。然而，病毒的传播速度太快，仅靠人工和低效的人类接触者追踪活动是无法遏制的。为了应对这一挑战，我们开发了 Connect，这是一个支持区块链的数字接触者追踪平台，可以利用阳性病例的信息并通知附近的人，从而降低感染的传播速度。如果有足够多的人使用该平台并从有针对性的建议中受益，这将特别有效。

Connect 是一个身份钱包平台，它将使用自我主权身份 (SSI) 证明在区块链平台上保存用户数字身份和用户活动跟踪数据。用户活动包括他/她去过的地方、他/她来自的原籍国、旅行和来自机场的调度更新等。通过这些活动轨迹记录，Connect 平台可以轻松识别可能感染 COVID 的疑似患者-19 病毒并在传播之前采取预防措施。通过在基于区块链的 SSI 平台上存储数字身份和活动跟踪记录，Connect 解决了基于集中式云存储平台的常见问题（例如缺乏数据不变性、缺乏可追溯性）。