Effectiveness of Contact Tracing

Contact Tracing has been done extensively to prevent the spread of COVID-19. In Westfield’s school systems, the Health Department has worked to keep schools open by isolating and quarantining school staff and students. From interning at Westfield’s Health Department, I noticed that there have been numerous quarantined cases that had tested positive during their two-week period of quarantine. If these cases weren’t identified, quarantined, and then followed up on, the spread of COVID-19 in these schools would increase significantly, possibly causing the schools revert back to remote learning. I am studying the effectiveness of contact tracing, looking specifically at how the efforts from local health departments and the Community Tracing Collaborative have prevented outbreaks of COVID-19 in schools, workplaces, and communities as a whole.