Contact Tracing: How it Works

Contact tracing, for decades an important tool in efforts to prevent the unchecked spread of infectious disease—including measles—is a key element in current efforts to combat widespread transmission of Covid-19. The Westport Weston Health District staff have been contact tracing since the district’s formation in 1965.

If you have tested positive, or if one of your children has, the process is designed to protect your privacy. You are asked to disclose who you have been in close enough contact with to possibly transmit the disease.

Close contact is defined as someone with whom you were within six feet of, with or without masks on, for at least 15 minutes, cumulatively, over the course of a day.

Those people will then be contacted and told they have possibly been exposed. They can then act to protect their own health, that of their families, and prevent further transmission.

They will not be given your name or any other information about you.

The call

The caller may be a member of a trained contact tracing network, someone from the local health district, or in the event of contact at school, possibly a school nurse.

On your caller ID, you should either see “CT COVID TRACE,” the health department's number, or possibly the school district’s.

Health officials urge you to please answer the call, take the advice you are given seriously, participate in the process, and let them know who you may have been in close contact with.

Everything you say will be strictly protected. No information will be given to anyone, including employers, the police, or immigration services.

Follow-up

By the end of the initial call, contact tracers may ask your permission to do daily check-ins to see how you are feeling. If you agree, you will receive an email or text message each day.

The check-ins will come by email or text message. They will come from ContaCT, the state's Contact Tracing Platform. Emails will come from SVC-Covid19@ct.gov. Text messages will come from (855) 670-0299.

If you choose to not participate in these daily surveys, you will probably get a phone call every day.