‘We’ve got to know who they are’: Contact tracing vital as county reopens

Who were you with on Mother’s Day? Did you go to a restaurant? Did you carpool to work with someone? These questions may seem personal, ones that you would most likely discuss with a friend or family member. But for contact tracing nurses to accomplish their job, these are inquiries they must make to determine who is a potential contact for a positive COVID-19 case. Contact tracing nurses have to be nosy. To successfully slow the spread of COVID-19, nurses must learn how to be a detective and dig into every minute of someone’s life. It is not a cutting-edge method of tracking down people who have been in contact with a positive case, but instead one that historically has been used in Shawnee County to identify those who are a contact for someone who has measles and chicken pox.