‘Contact tracers’ respond to cases in Rappahannock

Average of 5 contacts for every infected person in county Residents quarantined were within 6 feet of COVID victim for 10 minutes

Two medical teams consisting of 12 people each are conducting contact tracing for every person infected by COVID-19 in Rappahannock County and elsewhere in the Rappahannock/Rapidan Health District, where positive cases of the virus are still on the rise.

“We have set up two teams, one in the north part of the district, another in the south, and they handle all the [positive] cases that come in,” Dr. Wade Kartchner, director of the Warrenton-based health district, tells the Rappahannock News in an interview.

The doctor says both teams are made up of staff from the Virginia Department of Health — “50 percent of our workforce is just on contact tracing,” he points out — and medical reserve corps volunteers.

That said, of the current 400 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the five-county district including Rappahannock, those people testing positive have been found to have “an average of five contacts each. Which means that 2,000 people have to be followed and monitored. That gives you the depth of what our tracing teams are accomplishing,” says Dr. Kartchner.

To be designated a “contact” person, the doctor explains, means they had spent more than just passing time with a COVID-19-infected individual.

The pair of teams, he continues, will receive positive test results for an infected individual from any number of laboratories and then “contact the ‘case’ and from that interview they find out who that person has been around from two days prior to their symptoms starting.

“They [those who were in contact with the infected person] have had to have been within six feet of the person with at least 10 minutes of exposure. That’s how we come up with the contact list. All of those people who meet that criteria are then contacted [by team members] and are directed to quarantine for 14 days and monitor their symptoms.”

Residents of Rappahannock County, at the same time, are assured that they would already have been contacted by the VDH were they at risk from the seven people in the county who to date have tested positive for COVID-19.

Given its rural nature and sparse population — and widespread social distancing — there have been far fewer cases of the highly contagious virus in Rappahannock than in surrounding counties — which is a good thing given the high number of senior citizens living here.

“It’s easier to social distance in more sparsely populated counties,” Dr. Kartchner points out. “The number of cases in Rappahannock County can be attributed to those two factors.”

Because of patient privacy laws, the Rappahannock/Rapidan Health District does not disclose detailed information about every person testing positive for the virus, although Dr, Kartchner informed Rappahannock County supervisors on Monday that exposure for the majority of victims here “occurred outside the county; two were due to community spread.”

“After the first case [identified simply as a Rappahannock man in his 40s] we don’t put anything [specific] out,” the director tells this newspaper. “Since we’re now sitting at 400 cases it’s pointless. And no one has the time anyway to put out the 20 to 25 press releases per day that it would take.”

Meanwhile, whereas Dr. Kartchner is beginning to see a “plateau” of COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths in other parts of Virginia, that is not the case within the Rappahannock/Rapidan Health District that includes Rappahannock, Culpeper, Fauquier, Madison and Orange counties.

“New cases per day here are still going up, but we started later — we lag behind the rest of Virginia” when the coronavirus began to surface, he says. “We haven’t seen a plateau of cases yet, but we can expect that in the next week or two.”

The district’s hospitals, adds the health director, are “doing well” in terms of available beds, ventilators and personal protective equipment.

Asked whether Rappahannock residents should continue social distancing and wearing protective masks even as Gov. Ralph Northam begins to open Virginia’s economy, Dr. Kartchner answers with one word: “Yes.”

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