It involves making a very long list and a LOT of phone calls. Disease detection is drudgery but it's vital to public health.
When someone tests positive for COVID-19, epidemiologists make detailed lists of everyone they may have had contact with in their daily life and reach out to those people.When someone tests positive for COVID-19, epidemiologists make detailed lists of everyone they may have had contact with in their daily life and reach out to those people.When I was a fourth-year medical student, I did a month-long rotation at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.
There was a cluster of travel-related mumps cases in the Midwest. I immediately envisioned jetting around America's heartland, swabbing people in hospitals and sampling the ductwork of airplanes — or at least, leaving the office. Contact tracing can feel like drudgery, but in an outbreak, it's vital to public health. During events like the current COVID-19 outbreak, it helps make possible early diagnosis and getting care to people who need it. The information it uncovers also helps public health authorities contain epidemics.For clusters of new or poorly understood disease, the contact information can shed light on how a disease is spread.
On the basis of the answers, public health workers may contact the management of airlines, restaurants, hotels, hot tubs, shopping centers, public transit, and other public spaces where the index patient might have had contact with others while they were sick. They review passenger manifests, reservation logs, and other records — sometimes even surveillance tapes — to compile exhaustive lists of people potentially exposed to patient zero.
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