My name is Taylor Pinsent
I'm calling from Multnomah County Public Health
I'm calling you regarding some important health information
I want to make sure I have the right person. Can you please confirm your date of birth?
The person then confirms their date of birth and then we move on with saying
You know, you've been reported to us with a positive case of COVID-19 lab
If I had a case reported, a positive case of COVID-19
we would call that person and we ask questions about
when they would have been exposed, so the two weeks before
and then what we call their contagious period, which starts the two days before their symptom onset
because what we're trying to determine is where they could have been exposed
and then we want to know who they exposed
so those are kind of our two big goals of a case investigation
Let's say it's a sporadic community-acquired case
I can't quite pinpoint where they would have been exposed
We now shift to who who they would have exposed and so
you know, I might say, okay, starting on May 26th
you know, what did you do that day? When you got up in the morning where did you go?
Did you go to work that day? What hours do you typically work?
you know, who do you work next to?
And so if they went to work in landscaping
and they say, yeah, I show up at work, I meet my partner
we get in the car and then we go do our jobs and it's all outside open air
for that example, you know, we would
collect the name and phone number of that co-worker who
rode in the car with the person and we would call that person and follow up with them
and with anything when you think of science and how we do our investigations
We can't ever say oh 100%, you know, this is zero risk
we usually say, okay, that's a lower risk type of situation
So, for example, if that case tells me
I went to work from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., on my way home
I stopped and picked up, you know, a pack of hot dogs
and then I went home
Well, them stopping at the store
walking in, wearing a cloth face covering,
picking up a pack of hot dogs, checking out and heading home
is not as high risk exposure as the person they were sitting in the car spending the entire day with
So would we do a public notification to Fred Meyer or whatever grocery store they went to?
Probably not because it's a lot lower risk
So that's what we're kind of constantly doing as we do these contact investigations
We kind of follow that same logic if it was a family gathering
Let's say everyone got together on, I don't know, Mother's Day
and we have aunts and uncles
and grandchildren and all kinds of people coming together and spending
an entire day in a home, we would then go through
and get the names and phone numbers of every single person who was at that party
to then follow up with them
and you'll often, with COVID, it's very contagious when you have that closer contact
I might also see those folks come through with a positive lab
Our goal is to slow down that spread and isolate it as much as possible
again, the ultimate goal of preventing surge in a hospital system where they
can't handle the number of patients
with contact tracing it allows us to
intervene from a public health perspective as much as possible
meaning, if you know you've been exposed
and you're supposed to watch for symptoms for the next two weeks
you generally stay home and then that
kind of stops or cuts off the transmission
as much as possible