Washington Begins Contact Tracing: Here's How It Will Work

WASHINGTON — Gov. Jay Inslee announced the launch of a contact tracing program in Washington designed to track new infections of the coronavirus and stop it from spreading further.

"It is robust, it is vigorous, it is comprehensive," Inslee said on Tuesday. "We think of this as a smart weapon against this virus."

The program will isolate or quarantine those who may have been in contact with the coronavirus. In the governor's conference announcing the program Tuesday, Inslee broke contact tracing down into five essential steps:

1. Quarantine Upon First Symptoms: anyone showing signs of a coronavirus infection is first asked to stay isolated until they can get tested for the virus.
2. Test widely: test both the individual with symptoms and all members of their immediate household.
3. Isolate Quickly: place any patients who have the virus and their households in isolation to prevent further spreading.
4. Identify Contacts: identify everyone the sick patient may have recently been in contact with.
5. Quarantine Contacts: place those individuals who have been in contact with a coronavirus patient under quarantine.

The state says a total of 1,371 people will have been trained and ready to begin contact tracing by the end of the week. Of those, 351 are National Guard Members, 390 are with the state Department of Licensing, and 630 are state and local health care professionals. As the program grows, more will be added and the state will seek volunteers to begin contact tracing as well.

Addressing Privacy Concerns

Inslee says the state is aware that contact tracing could bring about privacy concerns, and that Washington will do everything it its power to protect the privacy of patients who catch the virus, even as experts track down all of the patient's contacts. Inslee says contact data will only be accessible to public health professionals, and will not be shared with anyone else under any circumstances.

Additionally, when contact tracers interview all the contacts that a patient has made, those contacts will not be told who it was that may have exposed them to the coronavirus.

Isolation and Quarantine Guidelines

The state has also given a rough outline of how isolation and quarantine will be enforced through the contact tracing program.

First, the patient who shows symptoms of the coronavirus is asked to quarantine immediately after developing those symptoms and should stay quarantined until they get tested and receive their results. If that patient tests positive, both the patient and their household are asked to isolate in their home for 14 days. A contact tracing interviewer will then call the patient who tested positive to get a list of recent contacts, and inform those contacts they may have been exposed to the virus and will need to enter quarantine.

Inslee says the state will provide support to those households as they isolate for two weeks.

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The governor wrapped up his conference Tuesday saying he understands how difficult this time has been, but urges Washingtonians to remain patient as the state slowly reopens.

"This is a moment of high challenge, that really calls for us to be more dedicated than we've ever been to this," said Inslee. "I think that's actually one of the greatest challenges, you know sometimes you get a little tired in the third quarter or the beginning of the fourth quarter, but we can't do that right now because this is the moment where we can actually get to a successful reopening of our economy. We've started down that road, but we have to finish that job."