Contact tracing & why it's important.
Guess how many people you come into contact with in a day?
Is it 1, 5, 10, 20 people? Let’s just say that in Cambridge Bay, you talk to 10 people a day and every one of those people talk to 10 people. That means that each of us influences 100 people per day!
This is why it is important to STAY HOME for the next two weeks to stop the spread!
So what is CONTACT TRACING? And why is it important?
To identify all people a COVID-19 patient has come into contact with in the last two weeks. It can be a HUGE task!
The Health Care professionals need a system to identify cases, a functioning laboratory, a system to feedback data, people to identify and follow-up with contacts, provide support if they need quarantine, and then treat them properly. This is a minimum three days of work per COVID-19 patient! And that is not even considering test delays, new branches of virus transmission, and travel difficulties in rural locations such as ours.
Contact tracing becomes complicated and time-consuming very quickly. Especially in the context of COVID-19, as the virus can be transmitted between people without even showing symptoms for days, weeks or none at all.
CONTRACT TRACING is really important in containing the spread of Covid-19. We can help our health care professionals know who is sick and who we were in contact with right from the beginning. That makes them faster at being able to do their job and contain the outbreak.
Take a look at some tools you can use to trace your contacts so you can remember them if you ever need them.
- Covid-Alert- created by the Canadian Gov to help contain the spread of Covid.
- SIGN IN SHEETS – If a business has a sign in sheet, sign in! In the event that the Health Care Professionals need to know who has been where, THIS IS AN EASY WAY OF TRACING!
If you are a business please find a simple SIGN IN sheet that you can adapt for your business. Enough can’t be said about how tracings is a critical part of assisting our health care professionals if the need ever came.
Find it attached to this post or download it HERE
For those businesses already using a SIGN IN, Thanks! It is important!
- PERSONAL JOURNAL – A list of your contacts and times with people each day on paper notepad, a notepad app on your phone or on your calendar.
YOUR HELP! All these steps could help in containing the Virus should it make it to our Region.
We ask that everyone continue to follow the CPHO guidelines and STAY HOME!
Mayor Pamela Gross
Municipality of Cambridge Bay
