Endless phone calls, painful conversations part of COVID contact tracing in B.C.'s hardest hit region

Dr. Aamir Bharmal will never forgetthe first COVID-19 case he and his team traced a traveller who had arrived from Iran in late February. While the eyes of the world were focused on East Asia, this case was troubling.

"Suddenly this told us that COVID was a lot more widespread than anyone had really thought," said Bharmal.

At the time, Bharmal, a medical health officer for Fraser Healththe biggest health authority in the provincemanaged a team of 14 contact tracers. There weren't yet restrictions on cross-border travel and international flights were still landing as normal in Canadawhen Bharmal learned the virus was not just in China.

He quickly realized he'd need to build a "disease detective army," bringing in more nurses, health inspectors, even speech and language pathologists, to create a team of 250 in case infections spiked.

Six months on and counting, Bharmal says his teamhastracked more than half of the province's total casestallied up tomid-August.

Communicable disease nurse, Christine Kumar, couldn't even guess how many of those calls were hers, saying simply,"So, so many."

She says her experience contact tracing for measles, tuberculosisand sexually transmitted infections, taught her how to build trust quickly on the phone in order to learn the intimate details of a person's life.

"It's kind of a microscopic exam of all of the behaviours that individual cases do at each setting," said Kumar.

Painful personal moments

The work itself can takean emotional toll.

Often, Kumar is the first person to break the news to someone that they are infected.

Sometimes she has to interrupt a grieving son, daughteror spouse in the days, or even hours,immediately after a death to make sure the surviving loved one isisolating until their own symptoms clear.

For Kumar, those calls are the worst part of the work.

"That was a loved one to somebody and they're no longer here, " she said.

Bharmal also spoke about the skills needed for the job.

"A contact tracer is a mix of a nurse with a social worker with being a disease detective or epidemiologist and a bit of a therapist as well," he said.

Bharmal and Kumar are both in their thirtiesand belong to thedemographic health officials have blamed for the recent spike in COVID-19cases in B.C.

Despite the amount of work it takes to investigate each possible exposure, the duolive by the public health ethos to support people, rather than cast blame.

"It's easy to say how reckless of you," Bharmal said. "We want people to share information and that requires us to take the approach of supporting people rather than stigmatizing them."

To hear CBC Vancouver's Jodie Martinsoninterview Fraser Health COVID-19 contact tracers, tap here.