COVID-19
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Contact Tracing Efforts Increased

Fending off Coronavirus is all about having the right information
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BY SABINE POUX

So as the virus continues to run through the state, reaching fishing vessels, cruise ships and oil fields, the need for accurate, far-reaching, multilingual information has become more apparent. For residents, this means knowing what to do when a person gets COVID-19; for the State, it means knowing which populations are most at-risk.
Contact tracing efforts have been strained in Alaska, but as of August 7, contact tracers have worked through a backlog of cases and shortened delays in reaching out to positive cases.

Contact tracing is performed by State of Alaska Public Health Nurses and other staff, the Anchorage Health Department, specially trained members of the Alaska National Guard, and school nurses, among other partners.
Donna Bean is one of the State of Alaska’s few Spanish-speaking contact tracers. She is an itinerant public health nurse for the State, servicing the Aleutian chain, and is the State’s only Spanish-speaking public health nurse.
The State also relied on a Spanish-speaking disease investigation specialist with the Section of Epidemiology in the early days of interviews. Through partnership with the Alaska Air and Army National Guard, there is one other native Spanish-speaking contact tracer. The Anchorage Health Department also currently employs two Spanish speakers who do contact tracing.

The State also uses translation services to get in touch with cases and contacts in several languages.

Many of the cases Bean has traced are migrant workers who are on visas to work in the fishing industry. After arriving in the state, or in nearby Seattle, workers quarantine for two weeks; if at the end of the two weeks they test positive, they might have to be in isolation for much longer.

Those who test positive are often alone in a hotel room. It can be very isolating and disorienting, and Bean wants to provide as much information and support as possible. Sometimes, people just want to talk.

“It can get kind of intimidating if you are in a hotel by yourself and no one speaks your language and then somebody calls,” she said. “I’ve had people who you can tell just want to talk on the phone a little bit.”

In June, the State made 82 contact tracing calls in Spanish through its translation service, totalling 1,045 minutes, according to data provided by Public Health Specialist Laura Norton-Cruz.
Twelve calls were made through the service in Tagalog, and 10 each in Serbian and Russian.

The State and other entities are bringing on more contact tracers. Norton-Cruz said the State hopes this new workforce will include more staff who can make calls in Spanish.

Existing delays in contact tracing — unrelated to any language issues — are making it difficult to tell whether Latinos and other ethnic minorities are contracting COVID-19 at higher rates, in keeping with national averages.
As of Aug. 7, about 9.9% of the Alaska resident cases identified as Hispanic or Latino, excluding cases still under investigation, according to data provided by the Alaska Department of Health and Social Services. Eight of those cases have been hospitalized. About 7% of Alaska’s population is Hispanic or Latino.

As of August 7, 1,915 out of 3,536 cases were still under investigation. The ethnicity of 289 cases was unknown. Unknown cases are individuals who either did not want to provide information, or individuals for whom the investigation could not be completed.

Rosa Avila, who is the Deputy Section Chief of Health Analytics and Vital Records for the Alaska Department of Health and Social Services, said it’s important for demographic information to be collected so that the State can know where to focus its resources. For example, the State knows that 43% of the cases are people in their 20s and 30s, according to Health and Social Services Department Communications Manager Elizabeth Manning, which is resulting in more communication to that particular demographic.

Avila noted that the state does not collect information on a person’s citizenship status.

“The strict purpose for any information that we use on contact tracing investigations is to help us identify disparities, for instance vulnerable populations that might be experiencing increased cases of COVID-19,” Avila said “because then that tells us how we can target our resources to specific populations.”
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State data is available on the Department of Health and Social Services’ site:
coronavirus-response-alaska-dhss.hub.arcgis.com  ​
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Sabine Poux is originally from New York. She is a bilingual journalist, recently graduated from Middlebury College in Vermont, where she served as editor-in-chief of the student newspaper The Middlebury Campus. In addition, Sabine was part of the vocal ensemble Middlebury Mamajamas at the same institution. She has written for Seven Days and SFGate, and has produced community radio in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Sabine’s love for Alaska first originated in Anchorage, where she visited her aunt and uncle as a child.