Contact tracing in King County

In our webinar, Ready for Winter, epidemiologist Mark Springer from Spokane Regional Health District and King County Health and Environmental Investigator Doug Dyer joined us to go over best practices regarding coronavirus and the coming winter season. This section touched on the difficulties encountered particularly by King County operators as it concerns contact tracing. 

The most difficult best practices that King County operators have had to deal with as the lockdown continues includes contact tracing.  

Restaurants are confused on contact tracing. They want to know — are they still required to ask somebody for information or is there another method? This information hasn’t been well defined as others, like masks or distancing, and it’s been a challenge to understand the intent of the governor’s language and a challenge to operators, who have no examples of the correct approach. 

This is all new, especially to customers. You should retain information for 30 days. And for those who have the means to keep these logs and they remain empty — the situation is rife with a lack of clarity. King County has reached out to the governor for more information and has yet to receive it. 

Compliance is pretty good, 80% across the board. Just make sure there are managers in food establishments that have good methods for asking employees if they are symptomatic and are trained and knowledgeable about what to do if they are.