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ESCANABA -- Contact tracing has become even more important as temperatures rise and people leave their homes to visit others, eat out, or go to any number of activities in the summer. To help stop the spread of COVID-19, contact tracing is needed to aide in intercepting the disease, quickly identifying cases, and informing people they were in contact with an infected person, according to local health officials.
A person is notified by Public Health, Delta and Menominee Counties (PHDM) after a case investigation is completed with the infected individual. The contact is asked to quarantine themselves 14 days.
"Once we are notified of a positive case we do a case investigation," said PHDM Health Officer/Administrator Environmental Health Director Michael Snyder. "In the investigation, we ask the person who tested positive who they have been in contact with."
During an investigation, the patient with COVID-19 is interviewed and identifies contacts they have seen and places they have been. PHDM collects, analyzes and interprets health data before calling a contact. PHDM calls the contact and notifies them they were in contact with someone having COVID-19 and because they were exposed they may get sick.
"It's not an easy call to make," Snyder said.
During the conversation, PHDM may provide the contact information on support services, advise the contact to see their medical provider, and self-quarantine.
"We go over what quarantine means, and tell them they need to stay home during the 14 days … we ask if they have any symptoms. They may be asked to go to their health care provider to be tested for COVID-19," Snyder said.
To protect the infected individual's privacy, the contact is never told the infected person's name.
"We do not give out personal information, unless we are given permission by the infected person," said Snyder.
Local healthcare providers are required to report cases of COVID-19 to PHDM. Data is sent from PHDM to the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services' Michigan Disease Surveillance System (MDSS). The MDSS follows up with the contact instead of PHDM. It is a web-based communicable disease reporting system and developed to help coordinate local, state and federal public health agencies in Michigan.
"We are a little different than other public health departments. We have an agreement with the state of Michigan and so we don't personally do the tracing through the whole 14 days because of our workload and staffing," said Snyder. "We had to move nurses around."
The CDC uses data to monitor trends within states and across the country. According to the CDC, contact tracing has helped slow the spread of other diseases in previous years -- for example Ebola and SARS.
Collecting information helps medical personnel understand COVID-19 better. Some data is collected from a patient's medical record, providing demographic information, age, ethnicity, sex, and symptoms, treatments, and outcomes. Scientists may use medical records to learn who may become severely ill from the virus, what treatment a patient received, and how they recovered. Scientists can use the information to follow a chain of infection to understand how the disease may have moved from person to person.
"People in close contact of an infected individual should self-quarantine 14 days from the last day they were in contact of the person who tested positive," said Snyder.