Part 4 What is contact tracing and how does it help?

True? or False?

What should I know about contact tracing? (Check all that apply)

Your information is confidential.

TRUE. This statement is accurate. Your name or your COVID-19 status will not be released to your contacts.

Contact tracing can slow the spread of COVID-19 infection.

TRUE. This statement is accurate. By reaching out to those exposed to COVID – 19 and encouraging encouraging them to get tested and take strict precautions inside and outside the home, contact tracing can slow the spread of COVID.

As an undocumented immigrant, I should not share my sharing my personal information with public health authorities.

FALSE This is incorrect. You can speak freely with a contact tracer. Your name and personal information is confidential and will not be disclosed to your contacts or to immigration authorities.

What is contact tracing?

As part of the State's plan to safely restart the economy, the NJ Dept of Health and local health departments have implemented a comprehensive contact tracing program.

For more information, visit the New Jersey COVID-19 Testing and Contact Tracing Information Page or see below.

How does contact tracing help?

Contact tracing is the process used to identify those who come into contact with people who have tested positive for many contagious diseases – such as measles, HIV, and COVID-19. It is a long-standing public health practice in New Jersey and around the world. It allows people who are identitified as having been exposed to someone diagnosed with COVID-19 to stay home and isolate themselves from other people (quarantine) so that they do not spread the virus.

Contact tracing goes hand in hand with testing. It is part of the process of supporting patients with suspected or confirmed infection.

Here's how it works:

When you test positive for COVID-19, in addition to providing you with support, the lab that tested you loads your test data onto the State's secure epidemiological surveillance system called the Communicable Disease Reporting and Surveillance System (CDRSS).
Your positive case is then shared with your Local Health Department, who will call you to determine close contacts that you may have spread the virus to.
A close contact is anyone you spent 15 minutes or more with over a 24-hour period and were within 6 feet of while you were infectious (2 days before onset of symptoms to 10 days after, or two days before your positive test if you didn't have any symptoms).
Contact tracers – trained professionals from the community -- get in touch with your contacts to recommend next steps like self-quarantining and to share resources about how those people can get tested.
NOTE: Your information is confidential. Your name or your COVID-19 status will not be released to your contacts.
Contacts are provided with education, information, and support to understand their risk, what they should do to separate themselves from others who are not exposed, how they should monitor themselves for illness, and the possibility that they could spread the infection to others even if they themselves do not feel ill.
Local Health Departments across New Jersey have been conducting contact tracing for COVID-19 since the State identified the first case on March 4. However, as the case count has grown, Local Health Departments need more help getting this critical job done.
The information that Local Health Departments are collecting is limited in scope, detail, use, and dissemination solely to what's necessary to identify, trace, contain, and treat COVID-19.

For COVID-19, the ability to scale our contact tracing capacity is absolutely crucial to break the chain of transmission, slow community spread, and restart the economy.

Contact tracing is a decades-old common practice in public health. It is not the same thing as "exposure notification" or "digital alerting" tools. These consumer apps, such as those created with Google and Apple's API, are not contact tracing tools. These apps function as a way for the public to track if they have come into contact with a person who has tested positive and entered that information into their phone.

NOTE: If you have any doubts about the legitimacy of your conversation with a contact tracer, you may hang up and call your local health department. You should also feel free to request the name and ID of anyone who calls.

You can find your local health department's contact information through the Department of Health's directory.

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