Contact Tracing Activities during the Ebola Virus Disease Epidemic in Kindia and Faranah, Guinea, 2014

Contact tracing with a real-time location system: A case study of increasing relative effectiveness in an emergency department

“…Other studies have found that the use of chart review in contact tracing is time-consuming. 3 The objective data provided by RTLS reduced the need to further verify and interview staff documented within the chart to identify additional potential exposures. In addition, RTLS may also reduce the effect of recall bias and need to contact health care staff, who must also rely on memory, in an effort to identify potential exposures.…”

“…1,2 However, conventional contact tracing methods are time-consuming and can miss a significant number of potential exposures. 3,4 Medical record review and staff interview methods fail to capture all potentially exposed individuals because of incomplete or missing documentation and recall bias. 5,6 Failure to identify persons in contact with infected patients increases the risk of transmission, placing many health care workers and vulnerable patients (eg, infants and comorbid patients) at risk.…”

Should NICE reconsider the 2016 UK guidelines on TB contact tracing? A cost-effectiveness analysis of contact investigations in London

“…Contact tracing, the systematic screening of contacts of cases, is a fundamental part of TB control in high-income countries and is highlighted as a key element of the Public Health England/National Health Service England collaborative TB strategy 2015–2020 3. It is also used around the world for other infectious diseases, including Ebola,4 meningococcal disease5 and sexually transmitted infections 6. The aim of contact tracing for TB is threefold: to reduce morbidity and mortality in contacts with TB by finding them sooner; to reduce transmission from those contacts with active TB; and to find contacts with latent M. tuberculosis infection (LTBI) who are eligible for preventive therapy (PT) 7…”

Bayesian inference of transmission chains using timing of symptoms, pathogen genomes and contact data

“…Contact tracing constitutes a significant logistical challenge, as most if not at all infected individuals must be followed up, and suspected cases monitored past the upper end of the incubation period distribution [44][45][46]. The coverage of contact tracing efforts conducted in low resource settings may therefore be low [47], and consequently poorly informative of the transmission network (Fig 1). Even if a significant proportion of contacts are reported, a high degree of mixing between cases can obscure the topology of the underlying transmission network, for example within hospital wards or classrooms.…”