By Maggie McNinch, Features Editor 

You feel a familiar buzz coming from your pocket and check your phone to see an incoming call from an unknown number. Curious, you answer it anyway. It’s a contact tracer from the Dare County Department of Health and Human Services, letting you know that you’ve been directly exposed to someone who has tested positive for COVID-19.

Hopefully this scenario hasn’t happened to you, but for an estimated 6,000 people to date, it’s been an unsettling reality.

Contact tracing is one of the key aspects in managing this public health crisis, and it is crucial in preventing more cases from arising.

“A contact tracer notifies individuals who have been identified as a direct contact to someone who has tested positive for COVID-19,” said Debbie Dutton, the Clinical and Community Services Nursing Director for the Dare health department. “So we notify that individual and then we provide them with guidance with regards to quarantine and testing.”

This conversation involves Dutton and her team asking that individual – known as a direct contact – questions, such as if they are currently experiencing any symptoms and when their last date of contact was with the positive patient. Based on their answers, the contact tracers then provide guidance as to when it is best for the direct contact to be tested. They also go over quarantine, what it means, and why it is important in controlling the spread of coronavirus.

Those wishing to become a contact tracer must have the skill set required for such an important job. 

“You need to have really good communication skills and good phone etiquette, because these conversations occur for the most part over the phone,” Dutton explained. 

It is also imperative that the contact tracer really understands what COVID-19 is in order to be able to explain quarantine and reasons for getting tested. They also need to have a specific disposition.  

“So many people get anxious when they find out they’ve been a direct contact and it creates fear in many people, so it’s important for them to be able to provide the information in a calming, non-alarming manner,” Dutton said.

So, what does a typical day look like for the contact tracing team at the health department?

“Every morning, I get on a Zoom call with my contact tracers and my call supervisors, and we go over everything that happened the day before, such as any new positive cases that we received,” Dutton explained. “Then we recap what the contact tracers did, how their calls went, if we need to follow-up on anything, and we just troubleshoot and brainstorm on how to get ready for the day.” 

Once the morning meeting is over, Dutton and her team receive information about all the testing that was done by the different medical providers the day before. They then put that information into a spreadsheet that keeps a running tab of everybody who has been tested, and as the results come in, they enter that into the spreadsheet in order to keep track of all the positives. 

As the day progresses, they simply tackle the cases as they come in, making phone calls to the individuals who test positive and figuring out who the direct contacts are. 

“The first thing you do is figure out what their contagion period was,” said Sheila Davies, the Director of Health and Human Services for Dare County. “The way the contagion period is defined is by going back 48 hours prior to the onset of symptoms or, because we do occasionally have asymptomatic positives, by going back two days prior to when they got tested.”

Once contact tracers figure out that date, they then walk through what the positive patient did to try and discern if they’ve had direct contact with anyone, which is specifically defined as anyone you’ve spent 15 minutes or greater with while being six feet apart or closer.

While this first phone call is important in beginning the process of contact tracing, it is equally as important that each of the positive cases get checked up on, a process known as daily monitoring. 

“We touch base with the positives every day just to make sure they are maintaining isolation, and we ask them if they have any needs and then we help support those needs,” Dutton said. “We also ask them about their symptoms, how they’re doing, how they’re progressing, and based on that information we can release them from isolation after they’ve gone through quarantine.”

This isolation is only for individuals who test positive. It lasts for 10 days. The rules change for those who come into direct contact with a positive patient. Those individuals are required to quarantine for 14 days and wait to get tested.

While symptoms are mild for many people, others aren’t so lucky. As important as contact tracing is right now, the monitoring calls are a difficult part of the job when the worst possible outcome becomes a reality.

“Some people get really sick and so when they’re suffering and have to go back to the doctor or when they end up in the hospital, the hardest part is following them and just hoping that they can find some comfort or get some relief from their symptoms,” Dutton said. 

Another challenging aspect of the job is when infected individuals or close contacts don’t maintain quarantine so they help control the spread.

“When we have individuals that need to be in isolation or quarantine but they are breaking those rules and going out in public, and are potentially spreading the virus, it’s really hard to get them to understand the importance of it and that we’re not putting them in quarantine just because we feel like it or to be punitive,” Dutton said. ”We are doing it for the safety of our community.”

While these factors of Dutton’s job are difficult, she explained that she is part of a great team that works well together and helps balance the workload. 

Davies echoed similar thoughts: “I don’t think any of us were prepared for the duration of this pandemic, but I’m proud overall of our community and I’m incredibly proud and grateful for our medical staff. When you look at the number of people that have been to the Outer Banks and the interactions they’ve had, we’re in really good shape, and the more people that do the right thing, the better likelihood that we will keep our numbers low.”

Check out the health department’s Coronavirus Dashboard at this link.

Junior Maggie McNinch can be reached at 22mcninchma07@daretolearn.org.