Positive for Covid-19, contact case: how the Calvados CPAM warns you

Contact tracing. This word, which has entered the daily life of the French since the start of the Covid-19 health crisis, is well known to the primary health insurance fund of Calvados (CPAM 14). A cell specializing in the call for positive cases of Covid-19 was set up there in May 2020, at the end of the first confinement.

Six rooms have been allocated to the 94 people in the contact tracing cell at the head office in Caen. The people who work there are on fixed-term or temporary contracts. "We are at the maximum right now as we were during the wave of last April or in September: we are adapting", specifies Frédéric Piwowarczyk, head of the cell.

Tracking positive cases

It is 3 p.m. on Monday, January 10, 2021 and Claire has already tried to contact 26 people. 10 responded and 16 did not. That day, she takes care of calls from positive people (or patient 0, editor's note) in Ile-de-France. Because, if the contact tracing unit deals with cases in Calvados, it also helps other regions. "Our goal has always been the same from the start: to trace the positive cases and break the chain of contamination".

In concrete terms, the contact tracing cell has access, via files, to all the positive cases listed in the various places where tests can be carried out (pharmacies, laboratories, doctors, etc.). In Claire's case, already more than 17,000 patients 0 are displayed.

The file is shared. As soon as someone from the contact tracing cell calls a patient 0, a padlock appears in front of the name. Patient 0 disappears from the list when the call ends.

A call lasts on average 20 minutes, sometimes a little more if you need to reassure the people on the line. A positive person who does not answer the call immediately receives an SMS from the CPAM which repeats what is explained orally.

“We tell them that they are positive, we explain to them the procedure to follow if there is a need for a work stoppage. We also go back to the date of the first symptoms to set the duration of the isolation. We re-explain the barrier gestures and we also ask for contact cases ”.

Contact cases notified by SMS

Many contact cases wonder why they are not called by the CPAM. With the explosion of positive cases and therefore contact cases, the CPAM has not called them since December. She sends texts “to say to isolate herself and take a test”.

Meetings are organized by video with the members of the cell as soon as the national instructions change, particularly in terms of isolation. "We must constantly adapt and update ourselves," adds the head of the cell.

The contact tracing unit operates every day "even on public holidays", from 8:30 a.m. to 6 p.m.

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