COLUMBIA, S.C. — With another day of over a thousand new cases of the coronavirus in South Carolina, the Department Health and Environmental Control says they will be bringing in hundreds of new people to help track the spread of the virus.
“Contact tracing is the disease control measure that has long been used by public health officials as an important strategy for stopping the spread of diseases like COVID-19,” Dr. Brannon Traxler, a physician consultant and contact tracer with DHEC says.
Traxler explains how contact tracing works in a video on the agency’s website. She says contact tracers call people who have tested positive for the virus and interview them about who they’ve been in contact with in recent weeks.
“We ask questions to help identify other people who may have been in close contact with that person, once we know who has been in close contact with them, we track down their contact information then communicate with them on their potential exposure to the virus and the steps they should take to protect themselves, their families and communities from further spread of the disease.”
On Tuesday, South Carolina had 1,741 new COVID-19 cases. With cases continuing to increase recently, DHEC is speeding up their contact tracing efforts and say they plan to bring on more than 600 additional tracers in the next two weeks.
In a statement on Tuesday, the agency says it’s, “currently building a management software database that will expand our capacity to rapidly reach out to the close contacts of those who have tested positive so we can provide education and guidance on the importance of quarantining, if necessary.”
The new database will also allow DHEC to stay connected with people that are quarantining.