Contact tracing is a monitoring process used to stop the spread of an infectious disease outbreak. The process is a bit like detective work. People are trained to interview those diagnosed with a contagious disease and learn who they may have recently been in contact with and potentially infected. Those people, in turn, may be asked to quarantine to prevent further spread.
Deeper dive
Contact tracers find the index patient, and then learn about the circle of people who may have been exposed and infected, as well as those who were not infected by the person. By building a “ring,” around the person, public health officials can then seal off the contagion and prevent transmission of the pathogen to others in the community.
Contact tracing takes a lot of time and manpower, however. Interviewing and reaching out to patients takes a lot of effort and relies on people answering their phones and being willing to accept they may have been exposed and willingness to self-quarantine. Technology can be used to help with the labor. Some countries use cell phone data to augment tracing.
Contract tracing was deployed at the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak. Federal, state, and local public health officials tried to build a ring around people who were sick and tested positive for the SARS-Cov-2, the COVID-19 virus. However, because the pathogen spread via people without symptoms, and there was no testing of those without symptoms, contact tracers were unable to manage the virus’s quick spread through communities.
Masking, vaccination and vaccine mandates have since largely replaced contract tracing as the primary means of containing and controlling the spread of COVID-19, as well as asking the public to voluntarily follow CDC guidelines by testing and then following quarantine and isolation guidelines after a positive diagnosis to reduce spread of the virus.