By LeAnn R. Ralph
MENOMONIE — The Dunn County Department of Health is no longer doing contact tracing for those who may have been exposed to the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
The expectation from the state Department of Health Services that local health departments do contact tracing and disease investigation for the COVID-19 pandemic is no longer the case, said KT Gallagher, director of the Dunn County Health Department, at the January 27 meeting of the Dunn County Health and Human Services Board.
The timing is becoming more challenging for contact tracing, and because the time has been decreased for people who have tested positive or who have been in close contact with someone who tested positive, contact tracing has lost its efficacy, she said.
“There is a need to shift our priorities,” Gallagher said.
Not doing contact tracing gives the health department more time to prioritize other mitigation strategies and to focus on immunization and on communication and messaging to the public as well as getting back to other public health work, she said.
The Dunn County Health Department is still doing some contact tracing but is now focusing on people who are 60 or older, which is the age group with the majority of the deaths, and for people who cannot be vaccinated, such as those who are under the age of five, Gallagher said.
Instead of spending time on contact tracing, the health department can spend more time working with people who may have a tricky quarantine situation or working with people who did not test at a lab but tested at home and now want to know what to do to keep other people safe, she said.
Available resources
Contact tracing is not a good use of available resources right now, said Dr. Alexandra Hall, MD, who teaches biology at UW-Stout and is a staff physician at the university.
Shifting to communication with the public will be a better use of resources, she said, adding that she will be interested to see what the public education campaigns on the county level and the state level will be able to accomplish.
For example, people need to know what to do if they test positive, Dr. Hall said.
Communication strategies can include advertisements in a variety of places including billboards and social media sites, such as TikTok and Snapchat, she said.
The messaging must also include telling people that public health departments are no longer contact tracing and that people should do their own contact tracing, Dr. Hall said.
The memorandum from the state Department of Health Services said that county health departments should still do disease investigation if there is an outbreak, which was defined as two cases at a school.
Unfortunately, there are many more than two cases at a time at any of the schools in the area, Dr. Hall said.
“We’re way beyond that now,” she said.
Dr. Hall said she was excited to see the shift in priorities and to find out what will come of shifting those priorities, but also pointed out, “We still have a long way to to go.”
“It’s exciting to be thinking about doing something more than documenting the disaster and actually putting resources toward something that will make more of an impact,” she said.
School districts
Bonnie Barker, director of special education and school psychologist in the Boyceville school district — and also a member of the health and human services board — noted that the Boyceville school district is doing its own contact tracing and asked about the other school districts in Dunn County.
Gallagher said she has talked with all of the school nurses, and they are all doing contact tracing, although there is a variety of ability and support.
The school nurse in Boyceville, for example, is not full time, so contact tracing is more limited as a result, Gallagher said.
All four school districts in Dunn County — Colfax, Elk Mound, Boyceville and Menomonie — have on-site testing, she said.
There are still some “rough edges” with the shortages of rapid antigen tests, so the school districts also are offering PCR testing, Gallagher said.
If a child has symptoms and tests positive with a PCR test, then that child has 90 days that he or she would not have to quarantine if exposed to the virus again, she said.
The “test to stay” model will be helpful, so that if children do not test positive, they can stay in school, which will reduce lost educational opportunities, Gallagher said.
When antigen testing is able to be done on-site in the school district, school personnel can follow up almost immediately and have a much faster response, she said.
Check list
One school district in Dunn County has developed a checklist that includes the date the student tested positive and then the action steps that should be followed, Gallagher said.
The Dunn County Health Department is always available as well to support the school nurses, she said, noting that sometimes people are not always truthful about their exposure to COVID-19.
Gallagher said she was grateful to have the support of the school nurses.
“We could not have done what we’ve been able to do without them. They have been amazing partners,” Gallagher said.
Dr. Hall said the checklist sounded like a useful tool and wondered if the Dunn County Health Department would be able to share it with other schools as a “best practice.”
Gallagher said she had asked about sharing the checklist on the day of the health and human services board meeting.
“We have amazing school districts that are seen as leaders in the region,” Gallagher said.
If the school districts in Dunn County can accomplish something in the face of the pandemic, it is often replicated in other locations, she said.
Numbers
Earlier in the meeting, Gallagher reported that Dunn County had 10,526 confirmed cases of COVID-19 as of January 27, with another 1,801 probable cases.
Early in the pandemic, if someone in a household tested positive, and other people in the household developed symptoms, the others were considered probable cases. Most of the probable cases, however, are the result of antigen testing, she said.
As of January 27, a total of 65 people in Dunn County had died as a result of COVID-19, Gallagher said.
Dunn County has a population of about 45,000, so one-fourth, or 25 percent of the population, have tested positive for the virus.
