The county’s contact tracing team have worked on up to 600 cases per week, with a fraction of the staff since the start of the pandemic.
INDIANAPOLIS – Since the summer of 2020, a team of contact tracers in Marion County have been working to identify COVID clusters.
“It’s hard to follow. I don’t think any contact tracing team in the country is keeping pace right now, ”said Shandy Dearth, director of the Center for Public Health Practice at the Fairbanks School of Public Health.
Dearth oversees the contract research team across the Fairbanks School of Public Health.
She said cases can range from 200 to 600 per week. In addition, his team has shrunk since the start of the pandemic.
“At the height of that, we had 200 people. We’re at 55 right now, but obviously our case count is very high, so we really had to prioritize which cases we were looking for first, ”she said.
RELATED: Low Childhood COVID-19 Vaccination Rates Called ‘Punch Down’
Marion County contact tracers are now focusing on cases that impact local schools. This includes any case involving someone 20 years of age or younger, especially people between the ages of 5 and 17 who are enrolled in an Indianapolis school.
“A key piece of information that we are collecting right now is the school the child is attending,” Dearth said.
This way, county health officials can identify any outbreaks that may need to be treated.
“That’s when Dr. Caine and his team can come in and have these conversations about whether they need to go remotely or maybe certain classes or classes. We really try to keep the schools open as much as possible, ”Dearth said.
How does contact tracing work?
When a person tests positive, the result is forwarded to the Indiana Department of Health and placed in a statewide database that can be accessed by local health departments. Every day, contact tracers review cases and identify those that need to be investigated.
According to the CDC, close contacts include those who have been within six feet of the infected person for at least 15 minutes. The follow-up period begins after an individual has been exposed to an infected individual.
“We immediately start calling cases at 9:00 am We have learned not to call too early and not to call too late in the day, but we are calling these cases to investigate the case and also to collect information. Close contact information, ”Dearth said.
Since not all cases are investigated, Dearth encourages the Hoosiers to move closer to their close contacts, especially during this latest wave.
“It’s more about collecting information to find these clusters. We realize that we are not going to contact to get out of this. We really need the vaccines and the use of masks in place, ”Dearth said.
RELATED: CDC Isolation Tips: Do You Need A Negative Test To Get Back To Normal?
For now, the team is trying to get through this school year. After that, they will reassess what is needed.
“Eventually, COVID is going to become rampant. So I think we’re going to start moving surveillance more to what we do with influenza surveillance on a regular basis. It’s a lot more automated work and we don’t have these individual case investigations going on for each case, ”Dearth said.
The Marion County Contact Tracing team can be reached at COVIDct@iupui.edu.
Comments are closed.