Here we are again, spring of the year and we continue to live with a global pandemic. Cases are higher now than ever in BC. I had wondered where I would fit into the workforce again, having been off for a significant amount of time. In January I was hired by the local health authority to be a licensing officer for residential care facilities. I was tasked with inspecting and investigating them. I hadn’t quite learned the entire job when I was redeployed last week to be a contact tracer. This is a result of the surging cases in BC. So file all the licensing training away for now, and pull out my headset to zoom train before jumping into the new role.
I had my first call today, with a coworker shadowing me. It went well. The person I spoke to had been doing just what our province has asked of them - staying close to home, essential travel only, no gatherings with people outside their household, and wearing a mask anywhere you cannot social distance. I had only two contacts to add - wife and coworker. This is what makes my job easier and stops the spread of the virus. Isolating and keeping your contacts low.
The importance of this new role is not lost on me. It is important to get it right. It is important to do the job well, and to be thorough. It is important to show compassion as I will be speaking to someone who has just been told, perhaps even by me, that they have a potentially deadly virus, and they may have spread it to their family. There is no room for shaming or blaming. We check with them to ensure they have enough support to keep the isolation, such as having groceries delivered, any other items dropped at the door, and access to medical care as needed. We ask to speak to everyone in the household, including children 13+ if they want. They can have their parent speak for them otherwise. Everyone has a voice.
The questions are fairly simple to answer: who, what, where, when, how long, etc. The hardest for the household is trying to remember what they did in the 14 days prior when they would have contacted the virus. Some folks know exactly where they contracted it as they know a person with COVID-19. Others may have no idea. I reckon I will speak to a very diverse group of people. I have no idea for how long. We have not been given a timeframe. It all depends on how long our cases keep adding up. Each case requires at least one phone call to them and one to each of their contacts. With the numbers well above a thousand new cases per day, that is a lot of phonecalls.
My office mate has moved out today. With the both of us redeployed to contact tracing, she had to move into an empty office as we will both be on the phone all day. We are given the option of working from home, but neither my office mate or I are able. She lives with her fiancé who is already working from home in the only real workspace they have. I live in my RV in a driveway that is busy and with my windows open or closed, you can hear my conversations, so there is no way I can guarantee any privacy, which is so crucial given the information I will be discussing.
So you will find me in the office each day, making my way through the calls as they are assigned, hopefully stopping the spread of COVID-19, one call at a time.
