Cooperation key to virus tracing

As efforts ramp up, Oklahoma official worries about people resisting testing, isolation

As the state Health Department ramps up a program to identify people potentially exposed to COVID- 19, a key official is hoping Oklahomans will be willing to cooperate with efforts aimed at minimizing the spread of the disease while the economy is reopening.

“I' m quite concerned that as we ramp up testing and ask people to be tested, there might be a lot of people t hat don't have symptoms and frankly they don't want to know if they' re positive because they don't want to be isolated or quarantined and they don't want to be put out of work,” said Aaron Wendelboe, interim state epidemiologist.

“And so that's the challenge. If everyone acts and works from the same play book, we can make this reopening work. But it's the extent to which people try to hide and evade the system — we can't control everybody's behavior that way.”

Wendelboe is helping coordinate a system to track down every person who had recent contact with a confirmed case of COVID-19. Those people will be contacted by the Health Department and asked to be tested and quarantined.

Members of the Oklahoma National Guard are among those being trained this week to contact people exposed to someone who tested positive. Wen del bo es aid he thinks the state will ultimately need 1,000 employees to make calls.

State businesses, including personal care salons and restaurants, have been reopening over the past several days, and more Oklahomans have been venturing out after weeks at home during the pandemic.

Wendelboe said he expects to see the results show up in data over the next couple of weeks, though he said he will want to see a lot of information before drawing conclusions. He said it is “certainly possible” that reopening the economy will lead to more cases, hospitalizations and deaths.

“And that's why our No. 1 mission is to make this

reopening as safe and secure for Okahomans as we can,” he said.

“There is a lot riding on people individually and everyone collectively on to what extent we make good decisions, (including) still trying to wear masks. I think there area lot of people, a lot of Oklahomans who are resistant to wearing masks.

“I'd like to caution them that I think it's really warranted to take as many preventative measures as possible such as wearing mask sand still keeping six feet away and just

recognizing that even though we're reopening the economy in stages, it doesn't mean that

we're going back to normal.

“If people's behavior goes back to normal, then that's really going to probably shoot up the cases.”

The city of Stillwater made international news last week when the mayor rescinded a mandate to wear masks in businesses after employees were threatened by people refusing to wear masks.

Another crucial step in stemming the spread of the disease is keeping people isolated who maybe infected, Wen del bo es aid, which is where contact tracing comes in.

One of his fears, he said, is that people contacted by the Health Department won't answer t he phone because they don' t recognize the number. The department is working on a possible solution to that, he said.

The other challenge, he said, is whether people who are contacted by the Health Department will abide by the advice to be quarantined for up to 14 days from the last exposure to a confirmed case of COVID-19.

If they are willing to cooperate, the state may be successful in controlling the spread while going back to work. There are legal means to enforce public health man dates, but the state doesn't want to rely on them because it might foster distrust in the public health system, Wendelboe said.

“When everyone' s working on the same team and feels they can trust the communication they're getting, obviously that's better,” he said.