STEVENS POINT, WI (WSAU) — A Central Wisconsin county is changing how their handling COVID-19 contact tracing.
Portage County Health and Human Services say the county is facing an “unprecedented” surge in positive COVID-19 cases. Due to this, the County is making changes to the contact tracing process.
A release from the Health Department says, “Effective immediately, contact tracers will only be interviewing and notifying confirmed positive COVID-19 cases. Immediate household contacts will be identified through the interview process, but additional interviews with identified close contacts will not be conducted. The names of household contacts will be included as a part of the investigation, in case additional follow up is warranted at a later date.”
They say these changes mean letters of notification related to return to work or school will not be possible from public health. Public Health also says the changes help them address a backlog of tests caused by both the recent surge and the data entry missed due to an upgrade to the Wisconsin Electronic Disease Surveillance System. Once the backlog is addressed, more robust contact tracing will resume.
In the meantime, since public health cannot identify all close contacts of a positive case, they are asking those who test positive to do their own contact tracing. Those who are identified as a close contact should isolate for 14 days after their last known date with the positive person, and be tested 5-7 days after the exposure.
Comments