The UK has announced plans for to help the country exit the coronavirus lockdown, with that thousands of people are to be recruited.
Other countries are already running such operations. In some Asian countries, such as South Korea, tracers are able to access credit card transactions, phone GPS data and CCTV in an effort to track down everyone an infected person may have come into contact with.
Meanwhile, places like Germany and the US are interviewing people who tested positive for covid-19, to work out who they may have infected, and to inform those possible contacts.
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The role is unusual. It is part healthcare worker, part detective and part call centre operative. To find out what the job is really like, 快猫短视频 spoke with someone who recently spent a month as a contact tracer in Ireland, which has nine contact tracing centres that make thousands of calls a day.
鈥淚t was very rewarding. I don鈥檛 really like the wartime analogy, but it did feel like contributing to the national effort,鈥� says the tracer, who doesn鈥檛 want to be named.
Calls were split into three groups. The first were made by healthcare professionals telling people they have tested positive for covid-19. The second, handled by the tracer, was a call to the same person, to establish close contacts since symptoms appeared 鈥� later changed to 48 hours before symptoms appeared. Close contacts were defined as someone within 2 metres for 15 minutes or longer, or within an enclosed space for more than 2 hours.
Working out all the possible contacts wasn鈥檛 always easy. 鈥淚f you ask someone to go through a list of close contacts they鈥檝e had over the last 14 days 鈥� or even longer, in some cases 鈥� they won鈥檛 come up with a very complete list,鈥� he says.
To get more information, the tracers used a script to walk people through their day-to-day contacts. One doctor the tracer called had already drawn up a list of names and numbers, but asking him to talk through his days revealed he had overlooked a few contacts.
The third group of calls was to the people who had been potentially exposed to the virus, advising them to self-isolate.
The number of contacts per person was rarely more than two. The tracer thinks the number may have been low because many interviewees were healthcare workers who isolated at the first sign of symptoms, and because Ireland was relatively early to begin social distancing.
People informed of possible contacts were only given the date of the contact, not names or locations, but it was often easy for them to guess. 鈥淚t was usually very obvious, because it was often someone living in the same house as them or a family member that they knew had tested positive,鈥� the tracer says.
The tracer had no access to data beyond a patient鈥檚 date of birth and no powers to compel people to give up details. All information provided was given voluntarily and taken at face value, without fact-checking.
When calling people to suggest they self-isolate, the tracer had no way to force people to do so. 鈥淲e had absolutely no powers beyond giving them advice.鈥� Fortunately, he never encountered any defiance. 鈥淓veryone was quite trusting and wants to help.鈥�
The job requires a sensitive manner because many people who had tested positive with covid-19 were worried about who they had passed it on to, such as one woman and who has a grandmother in her 90s.
Others feared they had been irresponsible, such as a healthcare worker who had been seeing her boyfriend regularly, despite him fearing he may have had the virus. That is why scripts were designed not to make people feel guilty. 鈥淲e wanted them to be as open as possible because that鈥檚 what鈥檚 important,鈥� says the tracer.
Many people were reassured or helped, he says, such as a woman with mild symptoms who was able to be fast-tracked for a test after calls established a confirmed contact.
Like most jobs, it had frustrations. Chief was the few number of calls he was able to make 鈥� around five a day 鈥� partly due to bottlenecks stemming from a lack of healthcare professionals to make the first calls.
Another was the speed at which tests led to test results and potential contacts being called: often more than 10 days since they may have been exposed to the virus. In that sense, the contact tracing was more of a formality, he says. 鈥淚 don鈥檛 think it was very effective in stopping the spread.鈥�
A spokesperson for Ireland鈥檚 Health Service Executive (HSE) says it has cut the turnaround for testing. 鈥淚n March and early April the HSE was processing a large number of covid-19 tests. The volume of people who presented for testing in March resulted in a delay in testing and thus in the reporting of test results and contact tracing. Significant work and investment has now ensured Ireland has a high volume of capacity for testing using quality labs.鈥�
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