Contact tracing efforts to ramp up as Centre County reopens. Here’s what that means
Pennsylvania’s state government is set to hire new employees to conduct contact tracing around Centre County — and the 23 other counties ready to open next Friday — to better track and prevent clusters of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.
Secretary of Health Dr. Rachel Levine said Friday she was not yet sure how many new hires might be made or when they would be made. But she emphasized that the state won’t simply depend on additional employees for contract tracing; it will also turn toward community health nurses, local officials, health systems and public health students for help.
“Yes, we do plan to hire people as needed,” Levine said during an online press conference. “I don’t have a specific number; we’re going to take that on a county-by-county basis. But when we need people, we’ll hire them.”
In Centre County, Geisinger, Mount Nittany and Penn State health systems have already been practicing their own forms of contact tracing.
How does contact tracing work?
Contact tracing is essentially just figuring out who an infected person might have also been in contact with. By having a health professional reach out to the latter, and requiring them to quarantine, the odds of future infections in the “yellow” counties, or counties ready to move into the second phase of reopening, should be minimized.
Here’s how it will work, alongside case investigations and monitoring:
- Step 1: A positive test result is recorded and reported to Pennsylvania’s National Electronic Disease Surveillance System. Community health nurses contact the infected.
- Step 2: The infected is asked different questions, such as their demographics, symptoms, onset, risk factors and who they’ve been in close contact with.
- Step 3: The infected is provided instructions on how to isolate. Meanwhile, the people the infected has been in close contact with — from 48 hours prior to symptom onset and on — will be notified that they’ve been in contact with someone who has COVID-19. (They will not be told who has tested positive to preserve privacy, however.)
- Step 4: Those who have been in close contact with the infected will be asked to quarantine themselves for 14 days to prevent further spread. Someone will reach out every day to those in close contact to make sure they’re obeying their quarantine and to see if they’ve developed any symptoms.
Gov. Tom Wolf said Friday that more details will be released as the May 8 date draws nearer.
This story was originally published May 1, 2020 at 5:31 PM.
