contact tracing

noun

: the practice of identifying, notifying, and monitoring individuals who may have had close contact with a person having a confirmed or probable case of an infectious disease as a means of controlling the spread of infection

Health authorities in all these places are working hard to find the original source, or "patient zero," using what's called contact tracing, or finding all the people the patients were in contact with … . In a highly mobile world, that's increasingly difficult.

—The Salt Lake Tribune

In the previous two years, two chancroid cases had been diagnosed in Massachusetts. The outbreak was terminated by intensive surveillance efforts, contact tracing, and antimicrobial treatment of both symptomatic and asymptomatic sex partners.

—The Journal of the American Medical Association

contact tracer noun

plural contact tracers

And each positive case will require a contact tracer to retrace the patient's steps and track down as many people as possible who they might have come into contact with.

—Luke DeCock and Adam Wagner

Examples of contact tracing in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Health techs do not require specialized degrees or certification like school nurses do but can still perform many of the same tasks, such as administering medications, managing sick students and helping with contact tracing. —Kristen Taketa, San Diego Union-Tribune, 24 Mar. 2023

Faced with a dearth of data, workers deployed their own informal contact tracing, keeping an eye out for who was out that day, and calling and texting other employees to figure out which co-workers had been infected. —Ambar Castillo, STAT, 1 Mar. 2023

Even the most rigorous implementations, which modified iOS or Android to provide new application programming interfaces specifically for contact tracing, seemed to fail exactly where they were needed most, on public transport. —IEEE Spectrum, 6 Jan. 2021

Word History

First Known Use

1910, in the meaning defined above

Medical Definition

contact tracing

noun

: the practice of identifying, notifying, and monitoring individuals who may have had close contact with a person having a confirmed or probable case of an infectious disease as a means of controlling the spread of infection

Public health modeling of the spread of COVID-19 has shown that successful contact tracing can reduce the number of infections dramatically, if infected individuals are quarantined, and their contacts and places visited can be identified.

—Michela Franchini et al., International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health

In the previous two years, two chancroid cases had been diagnosed in Massachusetts. The outbreak was terminated by intensive surveillance efforts, contact tracing, and antimicrobial treatment of both symptomatic and asymptomatic sex partners.

—The Journal of the American Medical Association

contact tracer noun

The investigations are done by contact tracers who help identify close contacts of people who are COVID-19 positive, tell them how to quarantine and provide information about COVID-19.

—Terry DeMio, The Cincinnati (Ohio) Enquirer