Contact Tracers | Illustration by Kayli Thompson | The Wright State Guardian
Many students at Wright State University (WSU) are serving as contact tracers during the coronavirus pandemic, working with local health departments to contact infected individuals while gaining important life skills.
Gaining this experience was one reason that shift supervisor Nick Johnson applied to be a contact tracer.
“I wanted to do a job that was meaningful for me in that I could impact the community, but also one that would help me later on in my career,” said Johnson.
Students in the contact tracing program work with county health departments in the Miami Valley to contact those infected with the coronavirus. Contact tracers Allison Osborne-Nurse and Aditi Gadhvi work with Miami and Warren County, respectively.
Supplying and gathering information
The tracers, while mapping out who these cases have come in contact with, guide them as they fight the disease.
“We have to collect demographic information, family history, and general information about how they think they might’ve gotten COVID, if they’ve traveled anywhere and who they’ve been in contact with, which is the big question,” said Osborne-Nurse.
Contact tracers determine who has been in contact with the infected person since they started showing symptoms, and collect identifying information about any contacts they have had. Those individuals are then informed of what they should be doing next.
“Either we contact them and let them know that they’ve been in contact [with the infected person] and ask them to quarantine at home or now, because of the large influx of new cases, a lot of the time, we give the person who is positive for COVID the tools to do their own contact tracing, to let their own people know that they’ve been exposed and to stay home,” said Johnson.
A typical day
Shifts for contact tracers and supervisors all occur remotely. A normal day for Johnson usually involves looking over changes in procedure from the health departments along with assignments for the day. Johnson also determines whether any special outbreaks need to be attended to, a process known in the medical field as triaging.
“We go through and find where you can make the most impact with the people that you do have, and then assign the tracers based off of that,” said Johnson. “Throughout the shift, we’re also providing a source of support because wacky, weird and crazy things do happen.”
Keeping track of calls
The contact tracers have to document every call, completed case and contact on a spreadsheet. Near the ends of their shifts, they will contact those who were left voicemails.
“If again I don’t reach them, there’s again another place for that data,” said Gadhvi. “I’ll enter that data and that way, they are being sent the isolation/quarantine letter that they needed.”
These letters are sent through emails to individuals who have been contacted. If the tracers are not able to reach them, the health department sends the letters through the mail.
Contact tracers such as Gadhvi and Osborne-Nurse typically make between 11 and 15 phone calls to contacts every shift.
As winter approaches and cases have been on the rise, the tracers have consistently stayed busy as more Ohioans test positive for the coronavirus
“There are so many cases every day,” said Gadhvi. “The sheet is always full. I’m like ‘okay, I have accomplished so much today’ and when I open it tomorrow, it’s the same thing tomorrow.”
Gadhvi finished her semester in November and now works 20 hours a week doing contact tracing.
