Contact Tracing

For a new or poorly understood disease or epidemic, the availability of contact information can shed light on how a disease is spread and how fast treatment can be administered to patients and exposed individuals.

How it works. Epidemiologists, or “health officials,” start with the index patient, sometimes called “patient zero.” Depending on what they already know about that patient’s condition — how the disease is spread, its natural history, what symptoms it causes — they will interview the individual to learn about their movements and identify all close contacts over the past 14 – 30 days.

Sometimes, they ask the index patient to provide a detailed history of where they have travelled, eaten, slept, bathed and who they have come into contact with even for a short period of time. This information is sometimes inaccurate and not complete due to memory lapses for whatever reason on the part of the patient.

Based on the answers, health workers may contact the management of airlines, restaurants, hotels, gym’s, shopping malls, public transit, and other public spaces where the index patient might have had contact with others while they were sick or within the 30-day window. They review passenger manifests, reservation logs, and other records — sometimes even security surveillance tapes — to compile exhaustive lists of people potentially exposed to patient zero.

These lists become the basis of an enormous amount of outreach work in the early days of an outbreak. Public health workers are required to contact each of these people to explain their risk, offer to screen for the infection and conduct regular monitoring for symptoms of the infection.  Understandably this is exhaustive and painstaking work that has to be completed in great detail. 

Extraordinary situations require extraordinary action.  By now we should already be limiting our physical contacts with other people.  To help the health authorities we should be now compiling our own documentation with regards people and places we have come into contact with. This can be done thru written note taking or perhaps a voice recorder app on our mobile phones. Tracking the history of our movements at this time may save lives and allow authorities to move swiftly in minimise risk to others and provide early care to those that may have been exposed.

As Risk Management Professionals, we are always looking to control or minimise risk wherever it occurs.  Let us take a scenario where you or members of your immediate social circle have been diagnosed as COVID 19 positive – What can you do to help the authorities minimise risk to others and shorten the time for officials to trace whom you have come into contact with as these individuals may have become infected or be a carrier of the virus?

To this end, a journal or note-taking process by individuals will help health officials in their effort for contact tracing.  Your information collected with regards people and places you have visited or come into contact with will help authorities trace the timeline as well as individuals who may have been exposed.  During or after your movements take some time to document information. This will help.

As always, this information is private and confidential and should not be shared with anyone unless required to do so to assist authorities

Some suggested details are:

• Date
• Time
• Location details
• Contact

     * Human (Bank Tellers, Till operators, Drive-thru window operators, Delivery people etc)

     * Surface (i.e., ATM’s, Shopping Mall Ticket Parking units, Lift buttons etc)

• Methods of travel (Foot, Uber, Public Transport, Self-etc)

Calculated forecasting of a particular scenario most to always translate to a streamlined response and containment of the imminent. To cruise through our training programme developed to hone the attributes of your risk and assessment capacities, you may click the following link: 

https://aztechtraining.com/course/the-complete-course-in-risk-management

Let’s be proactive in this …. Share this article … Lives are at stake!!!

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