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Contact tracers face resistance, difficulties in notifying people to quarantine

CHARLOTTE — If you have had prolonged, close contact with someone who has tested positive for COVID-19, you can expect a call from the county health department. The problem is, those calls are sometimes going unanswered.

“If people are not going to respond when we tell them to quarantine, if they are not going to answer the telephone, then we are limited in what we can do to continue to make sure they are not in the community and infecting others,” said Gibbie Harris, Mecklenburg County’s health director.

Harris said since early June, the county has had 5,200 people with household contacts reported. Contact tracers got little or unhelpful information from about 25% of them, such as only a first name, no phone number and no address.

Not all people have answered the county’s phone calls.

People are called at least three times within 24 hours. Of the people with numbers listed, Harris said the county was only able to get in touch with about 85% of them.

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People with COVID-19 are also resisting isolation at times.

“One of the concerns we are hearing from people every day, when talking to people who have tested positive, is they appreciate the information, but they’ve got to go to work,” Harris said.

The problem is not limited to Mecklenburg County. Dare County Health Director Dr. Sheila Davies said in a media briefing that her contact tracers are facing difficulties as well.

“Our callers have been hung up on and spoken to inappropriately when they called,” Davies said. “Additionally, people have refused to cooperate, refused to provide critical information for contact tracing and indicated they will not comply with quarantine or isolation orders.”

Davies said at least 27 cases are tied to a large party in Dare County. The infected partygoers spread it to other individuals and family members. At least one hospitalization is connected to the party.

Davies and her team are facing resistance as they try to alert people of the need to quarantine

“We are not making these calls because it is fun or because we have nothing better to do,” Davies said. “We are making these calls because they are critical pieces of trying to control the virus.”