Officials Urge Cooperation with Coronavirus Contact Tracing, Assure Confidentiality of Process

In addition to social distancing and the use of masks to stem the spread of COVID-19 throughout Pasadena and Los Angeles County, public health officials are reiterating the importance of tracing those exposed to the virus and urging people with positive test results to cooperate with public health officials 

Contact tracing is one of public health officials’ most powerful tools to combat the pandemic, but its effectiveness is dependent on the participation and cooperation of people when contacted by health officials after receiving positive test results, Pasadena Public Health Department officials said.

Teams of contact tracers in both the city and county health departments work to contact everyone person who tests positive for the novel coronavirus in order to check on them, as well as to try to determine whether others may have been exposed to the virus and should be notified, according to Mary Urtecho-Garcia, a contact tracer with the Pasadena Public Health Department

“Answer your phones please!” she said Thursday.

And it’s also important that interviewees provide complete and accurate information during the phone interviews, officials said.

“Everything is confidential,” Urtecho-Garcia said. Contact tracers never share the names of the people they contact with anyone. Those identified as being at possible risk are contacted and told they have been exposed to a positive person, but the department never discloses who the positive person is.

“We’re sort of detectives, trying to remind them, ‘where have you been?’ ” she said. But the end goal is not to admonish anyone, but merely to slow the spread of the pandemic and keep as many people healthy as possible.

Time is of the essence, she added.

“If people don’t answer the phones, we have to send them letters,” Urtecho-Garcia said. “We’re really working on timeline crunches. We’re trying to get to the people who have tested positive the soonest, because we’re trying to prevent them from spreading (the virus) any further. If people don’t know their positive, and they’re asymptomatic, they’re out there in the community and they’re super spreaders.”

Urtecho-Garcia has worked as a nutritionist at the Pasadena Public Health Department, where she has run the nutrition and physical activity program for 16 years.

Since the pandemic struck, she and six other city employees, including fellow health workers — as well as staffers from other departments such as transportation and human resources — have been tapped and trained to work as contact tracers, she explained.

All city workers can potentially transition into disaster relief workers in the event of a major emergency, city spokeswoman Lisa Derderian said. Training and preparations for just such an event has been ongoing regularly for years, she said.

The best candidates are people who know the community and its resources well, so they’re able to quickly connect people in need with nearby help, Urtecho-Garcia said.

In speaking with people affected by COVID-19, health officials are also able to learn more about how the virus is spreading, helping them develop strategies to stop it, she added.

One driving factor in the continued spread of the virus appears to be economic.

Tracers have found, in many cases, that people feel they must continue working to support their households, even if a family member under the same roof has tested positive for COVID-19, Urtecho-Garcia said.

Other times, “people are working sick,” she said. Some people become ill, but assume it must be the flu or a cold, and continue working until fatigue overcomes them, she said.

“People just need to know, if they’re sick, please stay home,  get tested,” Urtecho-Garcia said. “And please expect a call from the Health Department.”

The sharing of bathrooms has shown to be a potential COVID-19 risk, she said.

“We’re finding that we have multiple generations living in one household, and they share bathrooms with multiple people,” she said. Common bathroom activities such as tooth brushing can easily spread infections droplets around, so it’s extra important to regularly disinfect bathrooms, particularly if shared by multiple people.

And as a nutritionist, Urtecho-Garcia said that now, amid the pandemic, it is more important than ever for people to keep their immune systems in good shape by eating plenty of fruits and vegetables.

The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, which sees thousands of new infections daily, compared with the dozens reported daily in Pasadena, has assembled more than 2,000 contact tracers, L.A. County Director of Public Health Barbara Ferrer said Wednesday.

“I want to really thank the governor and the state Department of Public Health for sending us 1,000 contact tracers,” she said. “I also want to thank the (Los Angeles) mayor for sending us about 300 contact tracers.”

Numerous departments from all over the county have also provided personnel to serve as tracers, Ferrer said.

But while the county has enough people to do the job, contact tracers there were also seeing reluctance from some people to participate in phone interviews from contact tracers.

“Many people that we talk to are very fearful and, in fact, are not willing to disclose essential information that helps us protect the public from this virus,” Ferrer said. “I want to assure people we never, ever give out anybody’s name who’s a case.”

“Even when we contact close contacts of the case, we protect that information. It’s treated as a medical record,” she said. “That information is guarded. When we get in touch with close contacts, we just let them know that somebody they’ve been in contact with was positive for COVID-19.”