General- Contact tracing

Chase the contact!

 

The Covid-19 pandemic will be a painful chapter in the history of this planet. However, besides the other changes in our lives, it has made a noticeable contribution to our vocabulary and revised the meanings of how we understood some words so far.

Pandemic (not epidemic!), social distancing, isolation, PPE, sanitiser, lockdown, unlock (Is that even a noun?) ki prakriya (the process of unlocking), oximeter, are some of the words and expressions which have crept into our daily language along with the name of the dreaded virus. One such expression which rings alarm bells is contact tracing.

In February this year, before I realised that C-19 had made its presence felt in our country, I knew what contact as well as tracing was.

Contact has always been the key to lifestyles, relationships and activities. I can hardly recall an activity in which contact in some form or the other is non-existent or that absolute isolation is the norm.

To live a fulfilling life, stay in contact with your friends and relatives.

Sages and saints have preached that we remain in touch with reality and not be influenced by positions and situations to enrich our existence as human beings.

Great minds have advised that we stay in contact with nature- enjoy the pleasure it brings to our senses and mind.

Even in meditation you try to contact your inner self.

In work or professional life, hard work and sincerity get better results if one also has the right contacts.

Sports like kho-kho and kabaddi are purely contact sports.

The negative connotations of contact have been gossip and rumours which spread and transmit through contact, maybe one person at a time, and have had serious repercussions on our social fabric and relationships as people who have been victims of this ugly game sometime or the other, would vouch

The referee/umpire traces the culprit whose contact pushed the rival team’s player to the ground.

Syria draw with Iran in 2018 FIFA World Cup qualification match. Courtesy: Wikimedia Commons

You might love strong-smelling foods like garlic or eggs but their mere contact with your dessert or cup of tea can be a challenge for your nose or tongue.

You dread contact when you are driving as there is no guarantee that the other drivers around you have the same understanding of traffic rules. Road accidents continue to be major cause of injuries, hospitalisation and deaths.

According to Merriam- Webster dictionary tracing also means

      

        ·        chasing

·        dogging

·        following

·        hounding

·        pursuing

·        pursuit

·        shadowing

·        tagging

·        tailing

·        tracking

·        trailing

Now you can try making a simple sentence with each one of them and come up with a different sense of the word each time. The meanings we have historically applied to several activities are totally unrelated with the virus.

Scientists, anthropologists, and historians spend their whole precious lives tracing and tracking evolution, civilisations, organisms, survival of flora and fauna in the forever changing environment.

Anyone who enjoys watching crime thrillers or court room dramas would also recall how tracking contacts and tracing their activities during investigations help crack cases even if the story gets convoluted and the facts bizarre. Aren’t thousands of people tracking the Sushant Singh Rajput alleged murder case?

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia says,

In software engineering, tracing involves a specialized use of logging to record information about a program's execution. This information is typically used by programmers for debugging purposes and...to diagnose common problems with software.

In the field of health and diseases, so far we only knew that bodily contact e.g., kissing, touching, sexual contact, with blood or body fluids, secretions, or lesions carry disease-causing microorganisms from the infected to the healthy. Not to forget the spread of head lice (remember that classmate who was continuously scratching his/her head) or, fleas (camp, hostel and hotel beds), super-contagious insect parasites that though essentially harmless, cause a great of discomfort and embarrassment. Their close relative, the body lice, carry diseases, says the doctor.

Indirect contact infections spread when an infected person sneezes or coughs, sending infectious droplets into the air. If healthy people inhale these droplets, or if the contaminated droplets land directly in their eyes, nose or mouth, they risk becoming ill. Droplets generally travel between three and six feet and land on surfaces or objects including tables, doorknobs and telephones. Healthy people touch the contaminated objects with their hands, and then touch their eyes, nose or mouth. Many illnesses spread through contact transmission. Examples are chicken pox, common cold, conjunctivitis, Hepatitis A and B, herpes simplex, influenza, measles, pertussis, adeno/rhino viruses, meningitis and mycoplasma pneumoniae. (Delaware Health and Social Services Public Information).

Yet most of these diseases never get this much attention because only a few of them and only some of the times, threaten the very existence of the host.

Now all these have been shot out of the park for a six. In our worry for health and well-being, sickness and its prevention, contact tracing is the key word.

Lori Tremmel Freeman, chief executive officer for the National Association of County and City Health Officials says the use of contact tracing is one of the oldest public health tactics, dating back centuries, https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20200504/what-is-contact-tracing-and-how-does-it-work#1

“It means that as soon as you know of a person who may have a virus or have tested presumptive positive, you work immediately to first isolate that person so they do not spread it further,” Freeman said. "You keep them away from other people, and then you work with that person directly to understand who they have come in contact with."

Contact tracers track a "spider web of transmission," following a pathogen like the Coronavirus as it spreads from person to person.

WHO says the 3-step monitoring process is called contact tracing. 

• Contact identification: Once someone is confirmed as infected with a virus, contacts are identified by asking about the person’s activities and roles of the people around them since onset of illness: family members, work colleagues, friends, or health care providers.
  
  
• Contact listing: All those considered to have come in contact with the infected person should be listed as contacts. Efforts should be made to identify each one to inform of their contact status, the actions to follow and the importance of receiving early care if they develop symptoms, besides about the prevention of the disease or if quarantine or isolation is required for high risk contacts, either at home, or in hospital.
  
  
• Contact follow-up: Regular follow-up should be conducted with all contacts to monitor for symptoms and test for signs of infection.

Yet looking at the crowds of people freely moving and herding outside and most without masks too, it looks as if while half of them are forced to push caution aside because of their need to earn, the confidence of the rest shows C-19 shouted good bye to them and informed that it is zooming off this planet.

And in the minds of cowards like me, who rarely venture out, with every outing pop up the questions – Is this mask good enough? Was anyone around positive? If yes, how many days in self-isolation? My oxygen level? Is this ache a symptom?

My hope for 2020 is - Change din nahin rahe, bure vee chale jaange. (Punjabi for- The good days did not last, the bad ones too shall pass.) God willing, prabhu ichchha, inshallah whichever kind of God is on duty these days, please!

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