Washington state will have 1,371 contact tracers trained and ready to go by the end of the week, governor Jay Inslee said during a May 12 press conference. Each time someone tests positive for Covid-19, the brigade of contact tracers will interview them over the phone and determine who they may have potentially infected.
The contact tracing force, made up of National Guard members, state Department of Licensing employees, and state and local health department professionals, are critical to the state's plans for the next phase of re-opening, Inslee said.
“We think of this as a smart weapon against this virus,” Inslee said. “It’s smart because its targeted for the folks who are positive and if it's successful it will allow us to reopen our economy.”
Contact tracing is part of a four-step plan to test, track and isolate people with the virus. In the first step of the plan, people must quarantine at the first sign of symptoms, even before they are tested, because “we have found that people can be very infectious early on in this disease,” Inslee said. After that, those with symptoms must be tested, and if they test positive they need to be quickly isolated, along with their entire household, for 14 days.
When a person gets a positive test result, they will be reached by contact tracers who will ask questions about who they have come into contact with.
Information that contact tracers collect will remain confidential, Inslee said, and contacts of infected individuals will not be told the name of the infected person they came into contact with.
The governor said the contact tracers are carefully screened and sign strict confidentiality agreements. Contact tracers will not ask for social security numbers, marital status, financial status, or immigration status.
Comments
No comments on this item Please log in to comment by clicking here