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Nurse practitioner explains contact tracing to break the chain of COVID-19 infection

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DAYTON — If you get sick with COVID-19, the health department in your county is notified. Public health officials then get a hold of the people you've come in contact with since two days before you started feeling symptoms and tell these people to quarantine for 14 days.

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For example, someone found out they were positive, but started feeling symptomatic May 5. That would mean everyone who's been in contact with this person since May 3 is now getting a call saying that they should self-isolate until May 17. keep an eye out for symptoms and call a doctor if they start feeling symptomatic.

The goal is to break the chain of infection.

News Center 7's John Bedell today spoke with Heather Demetriades, a nurse practitioner with Public Health - Dayton and Montgomery County.

Public health officials have been doing contact tracing for decades to slow all kinds of infective diseases.

Demetriades told Bedell that COVID cases are increasing each day, and that right now she's beginning her day calling about 20 people who are confirmed positive cases and then calling all their contacts, and those people's contacts and so on.

Contact tracing doesn't include everyone you've seen, but what they call "close contacts."

"Close contacts are defined as anybody who's been within as close as six feet of you where droplets could spread, where air might be exchanged for a period of at least 10-15 minutes or longer. So we don't want folks to worry if they've wandered in or out of a store and maybe somebody who was positive was in there that is the reason we keep stressing wearing masks, social distancing, that kind of thing will help decrease the risk that you've had a contact," Demetriades said.

Governor DeWine has said he wants to hire 1,800 people to help with contact tracing across the state.


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