How Contact Tracing Can Help Beat The Pandemic?

Contact tracing is a specialized skill. To be done effectively, it requires people with the training, supervision, and access to social and medical support for patients and contacts. Requisite knowledge and skills for contact tracers include, but are not limited to:

• An understanding of patient confidentiality, including the ability to conduct interviews without violating confidentiality (e.g., to those who might overhear their conversations)
• Understanding of the medical terms and principles of exposure, infection, infectious period, potentially infectious interactions, symptoms of disease, pre-symptomatic and asymptomatic infection.
• Resourcefulness in locating patients.
  
• Understanding of when to refer individuals or situations to medical, social, or supervisory resources
• Cultural competency appropriate to the local community

• Contact tracing is part of the process of supporting patients and warning contacts of exposure in order to stop chains of transmission.