This graphic displayed during Monday’s state COVID-19 press conference explains how contact tracing works to prevent wider spread of infectious diseases. Image from Indiana State Department of Health
INDIANAPOLIS — As of Monday, Indiana’s ability to trace who COVID-19-positive patients have had contact with is improving.
Indiana State Health Commissioner Dr. Kris Box announced that the first 325 people have been hired and trained to assist local health departments in contact tracing across the state.
The first phase, which will focus on 21 hard-hit counties, came online Monday, while more tracers will be brought on and the program will expand to all 92 counties by next Monday, May 18.
“Contact tracing allows the state to respond swiftly to outbreaks and contain the threat of additional illnesses around the state,” Box said.
Along with an expansion of 50 new testing sites across the state, the Indiana State Department of Health has also been working to boost its contact tracing ability.
As the state slowly reopens to business and works toward normalcy over the many coming weeks, the ability to quickly identify a person infected with COVID-19, isolate them, and find and quarantine anyone they may have exposed through close contact in order to stop wider spread of the virus.
When someone tests positive, a tracer will contact them for an interview that can take more than an hour to talk about where they’ve been, what they’ve done and get contact information from anyone that might have come into close contact with them.
As COVID-19 testing can often give a false negative for asymptomatic patients and since people can develop symptoms over a period of up to two weeks, close contacts will be ordered into 14-day quarantines if they’ve been closely exposed.
Box stressed Monday that any information given to contact tracers is treated as private medical information, so much so that even if a person is contacted to be alerted they may have been exposed to COVID-19, tracers won’t be able to reveal the name or circumstances of the person who exposed them.
“We do not release names with regards to anyone,” Box said.
When asked a question about cooperation with contact tracers or enforcement of quarantines, Box said neither had been an issue to date.
People cannot be compelled to talk to contact tracers — although ignoring them probably won’t work as the state has previously said COVID-19-positive patients will be texted and emailed, then called, then possibly visited at work or home by health officials if they don’t respond — the process is critical to prevent more people from getting sick, Box said.
“I cannot force someone to tell me who they’ve been in contact with or where they’ve been. Fortunately we’ve not run into that problem,” Box said. “They don’t want to infect someone else. … We haven’t really run into that issue.”
The contact tracing program has tied in with Indiana’s expanded testing program to help better and more quickly identify who does or doesn’t have the virus.
OptumServe opened 20 testing sites at Indiana National Guard armories last week on Wednesday and will open 30 more on Wednesday this week, providing testing to both symptomatic people and asymptomatic people with risk factors.
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