Managing new coronavirus cases: How does Public Health deal with every positive?
The Epidemiology area of the Valencia Public Health Center is working at full capacity on the health alert of COVID-19, and other areas have joined to support Epidemiology at this time. All departments continue to function (Prevention, Food Safety, Occupational Safety or Environmental Health, for example) but the priority is to join forces against the pandemic.
What process is followed with each new confirmed case?
Sources from the Valencia Public Health Center explain how they face each positive case in COVID-19:
- Every day, the Preventive Medicine doctor of each hospital or health department contacts the Valencia Public Health Center to communicate new confirmed cases to them.
- From Public Health they call each infected person to find out who they have been with and how they have contracted it. If they cannot speak to the patient, they contact a relative to do this investigation. It is a matter of reconstructing the entire route that the infected person has been able to carry out, to know with whom he has been in contact. At this point, it is important to also know if you have been in contact with doctors.
- After these inquiries, special care is taken with the close contacts: those people who live in the same house as the patient or who have direct contact with him. The work of Public Health is meticulous: these close contacts are noted and it is checked whether they have been infected. This is how the virus is "tracked". If the close contact did not have a fever 14 days after being with the affected person, the contagion has not occurred.
- If the coronavirus case is mild and self-isolated at home, a series of recommendations are sent to you, such as staying in one room (to avoid being in contact with other inhabitants) and using your own bathroom, which is not used by anyone plus.
The protocols are changing and updating every day, to have the maximum efficiency in the performance.
How to know if you have had a close contact or not
Close contact occurs when you have cared for a person with coronavirus or suspected coronavirus, or if you have maintained a close relationship (less than two meters) and continued over time.
Public Health doctors have noticed the amount of hoaxes and disinformation circulating, especially by WhatsApp, and they transmit clear messages: you just have to pay attention to the official sources of the Ministry of Health, the Ministry and the WHO, have the phone number 900 300 555 and follow all the hygienic and confinement recommendations.