University of California San Diego Contact Tracing Discussion and Responses

Last week we read about outbreak investigation, which is one of my favorite topics. If you’ve been paying attention to the news about COVID-19, you’ve probably heard a lot about one particular outbreak investigation tool, namely contact tracing.

Contact tracing is pretty much what you’d expect from the name: It means tracking down all the people that an infected person came into contact with when they may have been contagious. For a disease like COVID-19 that can be spread before a person is showing symptoms, you’d probably also want to track down all the people those initial contacts came into contact with, as well.

It can be a massive undertaking! When we’re not engaged in social distancing, we come into contact with tons of people every day–often without even knowing who they are (think: people standing in line with you at Starbucks).

For your initial response to this week’s DQ: Find an example of contact tracing being used to control an outbreak other than COVID-19.

Briefly describe the context (e.g., the disease, the location, the population at risk).

How and why contact tracing was used?

What technologies did the health authorities employ (e.g., pen and paper, tablets, cell phone location data) and how was it used?

What challenges would you foresee in applying the same approach to the COVID-19 pandemic, and how could those challenges be addressed?