John Hopkins University is offering a free COVID-19 Contact Tracing Course as a way to earn a certificate to help in becoming employed as a contact tracer. It is said that thousands will need to be hired in 2020 as contact tracers to help with the spread of COVID-19.
I took this class in May and found the training to be comprehensive. There was good information on how contact tracing will be used and what the public needs to be aware of should you want to be hired as a contact tracer or get contacted by one.
The class was taught by Emily Gurley, PhD, Associate Scientist in the Department of Epidemiology at John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
“We must test symptomatic people and identify their contacts quickly to limit the spread," she stated. "The role of contact tracing is for the tracer to find people who are infected, limit the number of people those are in contact with so the transmission chain will not keep going.”
Contact tracers are to ask the infected person the following questions:
- Who was in physical contact with you or had close contact within six feet for 15 minutes or more?
- Who is in your shared environment? With whom are you sharing food, a bathroom, or bed? (It was stated that transmission is more likely between people who live together.)
The contact tracer then does the following:
- Advise them you are the support person for the infected. Ensure they have access to medical care and social services, offer treatment, limit their contact with other people, and "get them to change their behavior."
- Identify people they may have infected. The next step would be to notify those contacts about their exposure, offer social services and treatment, limit their contact with other people who "could become infections" and to get them to change their behavior.
- A contact tracer will ask for phone numbers, email addresses, and specific information on where everyone has visited. It was repeated many times that this gathering of information helps "control" transmission.
- Pass on high-risk situations on to a supervisor. Then the information may go to a specialized team that deals with institutions or facilities.
- Provide isolation or quarantine information and advise that the sick and infected need to isolate themselves. Any of their contacts will need to quarantine for 14 days, even if they are not showing symptoms.
- All information is to remain confidential. However, they did not discuss anything regarding where this information is stored, how it is secured, or where the information goes.
A contact tracer is trained to check in regularly with both the sick and their contacts, ask specific questions, and even inquire into their text messages as a reminder to who they may have been in contact with or where they have been.
Throughout the training, it was reiterated that it is important to contact people and retain their contact information, because this is “important to protect the people around you,” "this is the importance of the health department’s efforts to stop the transmission,” and "this is done to protect the health of the public.”
It was also stated that obtaining access to people’s private information after it has been given is for “protecting the public," and information can be shared for purposes of “public health.”
No information was discussed regarding health care privacy or the law.
Part 4 of this series will discuss how the course addresses privacy, confidentiality, ethics, and my observations throughout the course. Click here for Part 1 and here for Part 2.
Susan Thiel is a Content Writer for Convention of States Nevada. She can be reached at Susan.thiel@cosaction.com
