Contact tracing: How to conduct, achieve efficacy in tracking down COVID-19 patients

Coronavirus
cases in the country have grown to 216, a month after the first case was
reported, with the ministry of health confirming a total of about 8000 tests
conducted.

Health CS
Mutahi Kagwe said government has been relying on contact tracing to the 216
infected persons, at it will continue even as it plans for mass testing.

Chief
Administrative Secretary for health Dr. Mercy Mwangangi, said on Tuesday that
over 12000 testing kits have been send to sample areas as the country prepares
for mass testing.

She said
that contact tracing will be bolstered during this the mass testing, to arrest
the virus from spreading further.

“The
government has laid out plans to conduct contact tracing, including the use of
technology during the mass testing,” said Dr. Mwangangi.

But how is
contact tracing effectively conducted to completely arrest the virus from
further spread.

When a
person gets sick, they are then interviewed by public health officials, who
then take a list of close contacts and fan out to ask those people either to
pay close attention to how they’re feeling or to quarantine. If a person who
was exposed is infected, their recent contacts will be tracked down, too. The
process continues until everyone who’s been exposed is out of circulation –that
is contact tracing.

Reports have
shown that traditional contact tracing, where health experts finds sick people,
then interviewing them who they recently met, has proved unproductive in many
coronavirus-hit countries.

This method can
only prove effective if much effort is applied, however, the challenge comes in
when the patient came close to a stranger in public places.

Apple, Google to use phone technology in contact tracing

According to
the Verge, contact tracing can be effectively achieved if people are
well-equipped — with apps or other technology.

This point
is well explained by google and Apple, in their attempt to use mobile phone
data in tracking down unknown contacts to the COVID-19 patient.

The companies
announced that they are building a system to let phones use Bluetooth data to
track when they’re near each other.

This will
work in the sense that If someone tests positive for the virus, health experts signal
the app on the patient’s phone, which will then notify all of the people whose
phones were nearby.