Nine employees of the Peoria City/County Health Department play a vital role in the community's COVID-19 battle. They're contact tracers--tasked with figuring out how the virus is spreading in Peoria County, and containing it.
Tracy Trelinde has been on this job since March. She talked to Tim Shelley recently about how it works, and what she wants people to know about contract tracing.
Tim Shelley: So can you walk me a little bit through the process of how this works? You get a case. Somebody has tested positive. And what happens from there?
Tracy Trelinde: So when we get a positive case come in, we will contact that individual, make sure that they have gotten their results from the lab. We do ask for their date of birth, just so we can verify that we are speaking with the right person. We'll ask about their symptoms, what day those symptoms started, what they're experiencing.
We may ask where they are employed, because people can be infectious up to 48 hours before symptoms start. So if they're at work, and they're not socially distancing and around other people, we may have exposed individuals that we will need to call and let them know that they've been exposed, because we'll want to quarantine them, and symptom monitor those individuals as well.
And we'll talk about isolation dates. We provide letters for work excusing you because you are positive. We excuse people for being in quarantine. So we can provide all those types of letters.
I'm going to ask you, if you know how you are exposed, if you are a close contact, did you recently travel attend any public gatherings, restaurants, any type thing within the past two weeks prior to your symptom onset?
TS: So from there, it's kind of a little bit of like detective sleuthing work here. So this person tests positive. Who have they been in contact with? Their family? Let's say I went to a restaurant 24 hours before I tested positive, too. So how do I determine who I need to contact to let them know there may have been a potential exposure, and who's potentially at risk?
TT: So we'll do a little bit of that detective work. A lot of times when I'm calling people, they've already contacted family and friends to let them know if they've been around them. Through my questioning of who you are around 48 hours prior to your symptoms is most critical. And I want to get those individuals, if you are around people a week ago before your symptoms started, they're not a high risk exposure. So your high risk exposure is typically anybody that you around for a period of 15 minutes or longer, with or without of mask at that closer than six feet distance. So those are the critical individuals that we want to get.
TS: So what's the general reaction of people when you call them and say you've been exposed to COVID? Because the way it works is, tell me if I'm wrong here, but the way it works, you can't actually reveal who it was, right? Because of HIPAA.
TT: Correct. When they call, they're gonna say you were exposed on such and such date. A lot of the times, they may already know, because the friend already contacted them, or the rumors started going around at work. So they may already know.
So we have an individual call work and say, I tested positive. They may already have started that contact tracing process for us, and have sent those close contacts home. So they may already know if they were at a doctor's office. But no, we don't tell them who that positive person was.
TS: Is that encouraged? Is that something people feel comfortable with, to jump start that contact tracing process themselves? To tell their family or their employer, I tested positive for COVID, and certain people might be exposed?
TT: Yes, we do encourage that. A lot of employment places already have a system set up in place to where they are symptom monitoring. And then if somebody tests positive, if they work at like a Target or a Best Buy, sometimes they're already going through that camera back to the last day worked, and making sure, so when we do call them, they already have that group of people in place for us so, and then we can provide those quarantine levers and set them up for symptom monitoring. So if they were to become positive, we can follow up with them, as well.
TS: Is there an average, for every person who tests positive, how many people do you have to reach out to as part of the contact tracing efforts to let them know, hey, you've been exposed?
TT: It kind of depends. It depends on if you are employed, if you stay at home, if you're a student, you live alone. It could be anywhere from [just] your immediate family members, because you really aren't going anywhere. And if you go to work, we have that social distancing in place where it's half staff. It's not everybody at one time. So you might see anywhere from one to five people. I mean, we've had 20.
So, maybe around the holidays. Like the Fourth of July, we had a big kind of outbreak because people were going to Fourth of July parties. One person went where they didn't know that they had it. They didn't have symptoms yet. So many people got it, and then so many people after that, and so forth. So it just kind of depends on everybody's situation.
TS: And that's something I've also talked to [Peoria City/County Health Department Administrator] Monica [Hendrickson] about a little bit. Upcoming holidays -- Halloween first, then Thanksgiving, Christmas and Hanukkah and everything else that comes up this time of year. Are we gonna see more like that, where your workload increases?
TT: It's a good possibility. We do have those holidays coming up. So we are encouraging, as hard as it is, to keep those family gatherings kind of limited. Smaller groups. Try to social distance yourself when you are with friends and family. Halloween is going to be a big one for us. It's on a Saturday this year.
TS: So [people are] even more available than usual to go walk around, or do whatever you do on Halloween.
TT: Right. Yeah, so we really want to reinforce a limited capacity at those restaurants and bars and social gatherings for sure.
TS: How many people are working on contact tracing at the health department?
TT: Currently, we have nine disease specialists. So we are contacting all those positive cases. And then our environmental health staff currently is--we have about two to three a day that are helping reach out to the ones that have been exposed to put them in quarantine.
TS: I hear sometimes people are a little resistant to provide information, or they're afraid they're gonna get in trouble, or they just, for whatever reason, they don't want to share necessarily everything. So can you just provide a little education on how that works?
TT: We're not asking identifiable information. Nobody's in trouble if they have COVID-19. This is just for us. Providing us names of who you were exposed to, if you know, that just helps us link how you were exposed. So we can go by that. But we don't do anything with that information other than use it for data.
TS: So if I was at a party with 200 people, I don't necessarily need to worry and say I was at this party and have to worry about somebody coming to punish me.
TT: Correct. Our main goal at the health department is to provide a safe and healthy community. And so that is what we're trying to do when we call you up to get names of people that you are exposed to. We can quarantine those to reduce that risk of spread of disease out in the community and to other people, because you never know who you might infect.
TS: What's something about contact tracing that probably a lot of people don't know that you think they maybe should know?
TT: We can provide resources. If you're a single parent at home with kids and you can't leave [because you're isolating or quarantining], we can help provide. We have some social workers on staff now.
So we can help you out with groceries. If you need masks and sanitizer, things like that, because if you are a single parent with young kids, you can't isolate yourself away from those kids, you still have to take care of them. So there's that ongoing exposure.
So if we can provide you mass sanitizer, help get groceries delivered for you to take that burden off, you can reach out to us, definitely. That's something that we try to ask during our investigation, if you do need help, we set people up with symptom monitoring, and when you do that health assessment, there is another question in there. So if you don't tell me, and think about it that day, you can mark it later and it gets flagged, and we try to reach out to you then and see what needs that you need.
TS: So there is assistance for me if, say, I have a prescription I need picked up, but I can't go out and get it or I need food. Basically, there is help available through the health department, or even connect me with resources that can help you with that?
TT: Correct. If we can't do it, we'll connect you with resources and discuss that.
TS: Okay, so if I am feeling symptomatic, then I should not feel afraid to go out and get tested for fear that I'll get tested positive, and then come into a situation where I can't provide this this or that?
TT: Correct. Yeah. So we want everybody to get tested when they're having those symptoms. We don't want you to fear of not being able to go to work or not being able to take care of your children. We can we'll help with those resources.
TS: Tracy, is there anything else that we haven't talked about yet that you would like people to know about contact tracing?
TT: There are things that we won't ask. We're not going to ask for a Social Security number. We're not going to ask about immigration status. Anything along those lines. We just want to know your symptoms, when those started, and who you were around. No, nothing like that.
And flu and cold season is upon us now, so we don't want to forget about those things. We don't have a vaccination right now for COVID-19. And I still encourage everybody to get their flu shot to to reduce the risk of getting that.
TS: I just got mine yesterday. Awesome. Alrighty. Well, thank you so much, Tracy. I appreciate it.
TT: Thank you, Tim.
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