Contact Tracing
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, you probably hadn’t heard the phrase “contact tracing”. But now, it’s an essential part of stopping the spread of the virus.
“We start by contacting people, in our case, who live in DuPage County and have tested positive for COVID-19 in order to learn more about the symptoms they’re having, the places they’ve been, and then the people they’ve been in contact with,” said Michael Wileman, contact tracing manager for the DuPage County Health Department.
Helps Prevent Asymptomatic Spread
Wileman’s team takes that information and reaches out to individuals who were in close contact with positive cases. Because people can carry and spread the virus before showing any symptoms, if symptoms appear at all, contact tracing is a way of notifying those who might not know they’re carrying coronavirus.
“A lot of this work involves looking at very specific timeframes and understanding who may have been exposed to COVID-19 during the time that some of those people were infectious,” he said. And then we can notify those individuals of their potential exposure.”
Be Careful
Wileman added that contact tracers will never ask questions about you bank, social security number, or immigration status.
Naperville News 17’s Casey Krajewski reports.
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