"“By identifying people who are at risk of infection,” says Preeti Malani, an infectious disease physician at the University of Michigan, “you try to get ahead when people don't have symptoms yet with the goal of preventing the infection from continuing to propagate.” This is a well-tested approach for containing an infectious disease."
"“It's the oldest tool in the epidemiologic toolbox,” explains Malani. “We thought about this a lot early in the pandemic with COVID. But we also do contact tracing for sexually transmitted infections, for things like meningitis and even measles.” Malani likens contact tracing to monitoring ripples in a pond, “trying to prevent those outer rings from propagating by isolating individuals and by identifying individuals who might be at risk of infection.”"
"The risk of further spread of this virus is low since it requires close and prolonged contact with an infected individual and those infected seem to transmit the virus for only a brief period of time. But public health officials want to make sure the outbreak is contained. Here's how authorities are using the practice of contact tracing to contain the outbreak and keep the hantavirus from spreading."
An international public health effort is working to reach more than two dozen passengers who disembarked the MV Honius cruise ship on St. Helena before hantavirus was identified. The risk of further spread is considered low because transmission requires close, prolonged contact and infected people appear to transmit the virus only briefly. Authorities still aim to contain the outbreak by using contact tracing to locate people who may have been exposed, including those who traveled internationally, such as to the United States. Contact tracing, developed in the 1930s to help stop syphilis, involves finding close contacts of potentially infected individuals and monitoring them to prevent ongoing transmission during the period before symptoms develop.
Read at www.npr.org
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