after a positive buffer the contact tracers arrive

There are “people who have literally disappeared” out of fear. ‘Cunning’ of the quarantine who left home secretly to go to work or another place, ignoring the obligation of isolation. Others who have tried to ‘negotiate’ the possibility of crossing national borders to isolate themselves in their own good retirement.

“Sometimes when we call the reactions are heavy. We get used to putting up with it and we’ve seen so many.” It’s the hard life of contact tracker. Telling Adnkronos Salute is Marino Faccini, at the head of the team that at Ats Metropolitan City of Milan deals with the daily search for positives and their contacts.

What happens after the positive swab?

“How do we find them? Starting from the list of positive swabs, close contact is those who have been within 2 meters of the infected for more than 15 minutes. Kissing, hugging”, explains the expert in preventive medicine in communities – operating unit of the infectious disease complex. “Therefore, it is necessary to reconstruct how many people the infected person met in the previous days. It goes back up to 2 days before the positive test, in the case of asymptomatic patients, and up to 2 days before the onset of symptoms in the case of people with non-silent disease.“.

From here, a list of people is drawn up who will be notified of the need for isolation and “inserted into a computer system through which we also inform the family doctor. The police are also informed and can carry out controls.” Controls that sometimes reserve surprises. “We like Ats we rarely discover isolation violations, no one would ever confess to us. At the first call, obviously the person may be on the road or at work and must immediately return home. We inform employers and during the Isolation We also send “quarantined” messages and instructions on how to isolate “. On the other hand, the forces of order, the local police, “can carry out house checks. And sometimes, no people are found,” says Faccini. sanctions administrative if they are contacts, to complaints sanctions if they are the infected. Then, there are those who may have to leave for health reasons and not postpone exams and then with all the necessary precautions they can do so ”.

Why escape from quarantine

Sometimes those in quarantine turn into ghosts. “There are people who are no longer there,” Faccini says. Not even the police have been able to identify them. They are situations of social marginalization, people who live in irregularity and also fear that Covid could put them in danger with respect to their position. in Italy. Which does not happen, because this is a health monitoring system, nobody cares about the administrative position of the people. “

Other delicate cases “are those of people who are here in Milan for occasional reasons, rub themselves together and find themselves positive. They cannot return to their city and this ruins their life. You find yourself in prison. You have nowhere to stay. In isolation. you can go to a friend’s house if you have the right characteristics. Or you are welcomed in dedicated structures. Today we send these people to Linate. They are welcomed in the guest house of the air force, “continues the expert.

When the contact tracker calls “Many times on the other end of the phone they don’t like us madly – Faccini smiles – These are difficult conversations. Imagine the person who, without knowing it, has gone on vacation, is in the Tropic and receives a call in which she communicates the need to isolate herself. like an infected contact. “With the boom in holiday returns, contact trackers found themselves interacting with a part of the population that often made special requests.” Wealthy, upper-class people who tried to bargain to try obtain the reduction of the isolation period or the possibility of moving to villas or houses abroad, in Switzerland or in France. There are those who have asked that we be allowed to make unlikely trips. It is clear that if they have to travel with their own private car to isolate themselves at home on Lake Como, we can authorize them, but if they ask us to take a plane to go abroad or return to Sicily, no ”.

“Projects are upset, but it’s unpleasant when it seems like you can negotiate these things. There are those who try to say: put the mattress forward and I’ll pay for it. All this is not possible ”.

With the reopening of schools, another variable was introduced: the Covid-positive child, whose relatives are contacts and must stay at home, as well as the entire class and other families.

What if there is something positive at school?

On average, contact trackers currently intercept between 400 and 500 new contacts per day from positive cases. “We went from the extreme of 20 people by chance, when it comes to a school class, to intermediate situations of young people who do sports and see friends, for an average of 10 contacts each – Faccini lists – But we are more attentive and more distant. And so, for example, mass isolation at work is no longer necessary because precautionary measures have been taken. It is limited to office colleagues, in contact with the company doctor. Massive events such as weddings we did not have some here, but our citizens who participated in Italy did. I remember a recent one from Veneto, in which there were several positive aspects. We have had outbreaks in communities that host migrants and homeless, identified and circumscribed, with even significant numbers of a few dozen. We intercepted them in time because we did a screening. And they were asymptomatic. “

The most dangerous place is within the walls of the house.

“The most dangerous place? Paradoxically, it is within the walls of the house, where there is no distance or protection. It is the point of greatest spread of the Sars-CoV-2 coronavirus and it is more important to do a real isolation well. But it is also the most difficult point where to do it ”explains Faccini. “For example, in phase 1 we have had outbreaks in almost all RSAs. Now we have had outbreaks in groups returning from vacation, among children especially for study trips to countries like Malta and Greece. And we have many family outbreaks. The last one intercepted this Sunday gave a positive balance of 5 out of 5. The whole family infected, with an infection that originated from a member of the nucleus ”.

“We have had in recent days – he continues – also outbreaks in the workplace, with about fifteen cases among people who all worked the same shift and became infected. We identify them by contact tracing and swab. This is because, if we suspect that the virus may circulate, we do so immediately. It is very important to act as soon as we feel a beginning, and in that case we also expand the concept of close contact ”. The returns, Faccini observes, then put another category into circulation: “unsuspecting flight contacts.” They are those people who have traveled seated in the two places adjacent to the infected person, that is, in front, behind and to the side.