Harvard rolls out contact tracing effort
Angela Sigal Poock helped one patient get a letter excusing that person from work and aided another in figuring out grocery deliveries. But the COVID-19 contact tracer really spends most of her time just listening. “Some people were really emotional,” she said. “I’ve been on the phone for a while with them to just get over the fact that, yes, they are positive and then give them a minute to adjust because they have to leave work or they have to leave class. It’s a big deal, and I think that starting from that is really important, and then you get into all the questions about contacts and whatnot.” A registered nurse with Harvard University Health Services (HUHS), Poock is part of the eight-person group that identifies and tracks everyone in the University community who tests positive for the novel coronavirus or has had close contact with someone who has. The idea...