Last week, Governor Jay Inslee announced a statewide plan for contact tracing. It is the official start of a widespread effort at implementing testing, contact tracing and isolation initiative vital to the phased reopening of Washington.
"If we do not succeed in this, what you might think is the second stage of our efforts, this virus could jump right back out and bite us," said Inslee. "We think of this as a smart weapon against this virus. It's smart because it is targeted for the folks who are positive and if it's successful, it will allow us to reopen our economy."
The benefits of active tracing is to allow more businesses to open, allow more people to move around in public, and to slow the spread of COVID-19.
"We think of the contact tracing initiative as an effort to box in the virus," Said Inslee. "We want to surround it where it can't get out of that fence and infect more people."
Inslee stressed that information gathered through contact tracing will not be shared. It will only be used by public health professionals. The information is so confidential, the person exposed will not be told the identity of the person who exposed them.
According to the plan, when a person tests positive the entire family goes into quarantine. A contact tracer calls the ill person and conducts an interview.
Names of close contacts are collected for follow up. The interviewer will ask about symptoms, demographic questions like gender and ethnicity, and the address of residence. The interviewer will not ask about immigration status, social security numbers, marital status, or financial information.
The tracer then reaches out to the close contact people to let them know they have been exposed and give them quarantine information. Close contacts will need to confine themselves at home for 14 days after exposure. They will need to self monitor for fever, cough and shortness of breath. This group of people will be encouraged to get tested.
The initiative gives support to local health departments, who are leading tracing efforts.
"We [Pacific County] have a quarantine and isolation program that is supporting people staying home," said Pacific County Department of Health Director Katie Lindstrom.
Lindstrom continued to discuss the support that the tracing program provides quarantined families. "Basically, it is some case management, and doing their grocery shopping for them. This is to make sure that people who have been quarantined keep in quarantine."
"We are currently working on the training protocols for non-nurses and for volunteer nurses to do contact tracing," she explained. "We are working on that first, once we have that all complete and set up, then we will work on building up that medical reserve corp to potentially pull in just in case we need it. At this point we have ample contact tracers. Our investigative staff is more than enough for the amount of cases that we've had. We actually have one nurse at this point that is handling all of the cases."
But the Emergency Operations Center is working on a plan to cover more tracing if there is a spike in cases in Pacific County. There is a possibility that retired medical personnel might be called in to lend a hand tracing the virus during a worst case scenario.