Contact tracers work to educate the public

As the number of COVID-19 cases rose in Wisconsin, work by contact tracers helped slow the spread of the disease across the state.

During the summer, Mark Kainz, the Patricia and Philip McCullough Class of 1969 Professor in Biology, worked for the Winnebago County Department of Health.

Naomi Jiter ’19 worked on overflow cases for various public health departments through the Wisconsin Department of Health Services. She is a graduate student in public health and epidemiology, the study of disease distribution and risk, at the University of Minnesota.

Kainz explains that when someone tests positive for COVID-19, they are contacted by public health departments and interviewed about anyone they had come into contact with since two days prior to showing symptoms or testing positive for the virus.

“Those lists of names are given to contract tracers who then contact each one of those people, informing them that they have been exposed to someone infected, educate them about ways to stay safe and keep the community safe, inquire about their health, direct them to resources, help them understand what quarantine is, how long it is and what they can and can’t do,” he says.

Jiter adds, “Contact tracing is a basic public health intervention used for disease surveillance. We’re gathering information and making recommendations so people can make better-informed decisions. We have everyone’s best interest in mind and don’t want any unnecessary loss of life.”

Over the course of a 14-day quarantine, contact tracers get in touch several times with those quarantining to track how they are doing. “If you can identify the contacts and keep them in quarantine, you can avoid people potentially infected from spreading the virus without even knowing it,” Kainz said.

Reactions to contact tracers’ notifications were mixed. Both say many people were willing to talk with them and follow the recommended restrictions. Others, Kainz says, fell into three main categories. Some were hostile, didn’t want to be quarantined and didn’t always believe coronavirus was real. Others took it seriously but were unable to quarantine because they would lose paychecks or their entire job. Others viewed tracers as “law enforcement” and tried to minimize their possible exposure, Kainz says.

“Once you are assigned a particular person you are tracing, you are their case manager until the end of their quarantine,” Kainz says. “I’ve had people call me up at the end of quarantine to tell me they got a negative test result and we have a virtual high-five. They make a difference in the community.”

For those who couldn’t or wouldn’t selfisolate, Kainz says it sometimes makes tracers feel powerless. Other than referring them to available resources for help, “there’s not much you can do to help them,” he says. “We can strongly recommend, we can educate them about the consequences. But they can decide not to follow the advice.”

The experience has been an exciting step forward in her career for Jiter. During high school, “I became interested in this intersection of science, biology, medicine and statistics,” she says. “(Tracing) is something I was already wanting to get into with infectious disease epidemiology, and now I get to try to combat the pandemic in my own community. I have been able to work on something I’m really interested in and wouldn’t always get to do at such a young age.”

Kainz adds, “I am applying my expertise in virology to a real-world public health problem. We are trying to control the spread of the virus in the community by informing people who are at risk and educating them in ways that could change their behavior. They should understand the contact tracers are on their side. We’re not there to make life difficult.”