MARION, Iowa (WOI) - County health departments across Iowa say many people who test positive for COVID-19 aren’t able to keep track of whom they have come into close contact with.
Zhen E. Rammelsberg, of Marion, is a certified contact tracer. Contact tracers call COVID-19 patients, take notes, and ask who else they have been in contact with before their positive test results came in.
Then, tracers reach out to those people and let them know they’ve been around a COVID-19 patient. But Rammelsberg says due to HIPAA laws, they can’t reveal the patient’s name.
”A lot of the training is teaching you verbiage to not freak people out,” Rammelsberg said. “Because most people’s general reaction is kind of panic.”
Heather Meador with Linn County Public Health says as the state opens up, it's getting harder to pinpoint every potentially infected person.
Protests, restaurants reopening, and high school summer sports mean more crowds during the summer.
”That’s what we want to remind the public about is that we have community spread here in Iowa,” Heather Meador, with Linn County Public Health, said. “So community spread means you’ve gotten it from somebody and you don’t know who that person is. We won’t be able to reach out to individuals that you don’t know.”
Ultimately, Meador says the contact tracing calls are about protecting the community.
See the full story on WOI’s website.
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