Nurses with the Jefferson County Public Health Department are being stretched thin as cases began to increase here over the past two weeks.
At one point last week, there were 14 active cases of COVID-19 in the county at one time.
The health department has hired one temporary nurse to assist with contact tracing, according to Jefferson County Health Officer Joan VanDuynhoven.
One recent case here had more than 40 contacts, said VanDuynhoven.
At the July 14 Health Board meeting, county nurse Pam Hanna raised the issue of how an outbreak will be handled after one of the larger community events that are currently in the works. So far, Frontier Days in Whitehall and the Jefferson County Rodeo are still a go.
“How do we handle that?,” asked Hanna, adding that getting with all the contacts is a time consuming process.
VanDynhoven explained how the contact tracing process works.
Once the health department is notified of a case from the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services in Helena, it contacts the infected person and asks who they have recently been in close contact with, as well as symptoms, said VanDuynhoven.
Questions include where the contacts live, worked and where the contact occurred.
“Sometimes it isn’t possible to find out who some contacts are,” said VanDynhoven.
“We go through the routine ways of getting contact information, ask others, try to find out where they work or patronize businesses. Sometimes we can’t figure it out. I am pretty sure it has happened, but we do the best we can,” she said.
Close contact is defined as someone who has been within six feet of the positive case for more than 15 minutes.
The infected person is told they are now under a quarantine order, and their contacts are also told to quarantine, said VanDuynhoven, adding that most of this work is done over the phone.
To quarantine means to remain separate from other people for a 14 day period after the last contact with an infected person, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Isolation refers to those who have tested positive for COVID-19 and who need to separate from others, even their own homes.
So far there hasn’t been an issue with compliance as people have been cooperative, said Hanna.
If not, the health department issues a warning, then a letter and after that, see where it goes, she said.
Meanwhile, the county nurses can’t get their regular work done as cases begin to rise and the department is down a nurse, said VanDuynhoven.
Former supervising nurse Karen Wandel recently left her job and the department is in the process of hiring a replacement.
Hanna further described the contact tracing process on the Health Department’s Facebook page.
In addition to notifying close contacts of an infected person, the process also includes connecting people with services while they are quarantined, and monitoring contacts for symptoms, she wrote.
However, those who are notified that they are close contacts are not given the name of the positive case or their location due to privacy laws, according to Hanna.
Hanna said that contact tracing is time consuming but it does stop or slow the transmission.
“It’s our best defense right now,” she said.
