The front line of the fight against the spread of the pandemic in Douglas County is being led by a team of doctors who have have been studying the virus since January.
They are called epidemiologists and it's their job to pinpoint where the virus is and track where it's going throughout Douglas County. They call people who have coronavirus to connect the dots.
“We need to find out how they were exposed to this. Was it here locally in our community, were they traveling in the 14 days prior,” Justin Frederick, supervisor of epidemiology at the Douglas County Health Department told 6 News.
The result is a county map of confirmed cases and a list of exposure sites that you can access online.
“It again allows us to understand the burden of disease in the community and make decisions based on that,” Frederick says.
He and his investigators make hundreds of calls to track confirmed cases in Douglas County and stop the virus in its tracks. A challenge for those not keeping track of where they've been when they should be staying home.
"We'll ask people to go back and look at credit cards, checkbook statements to jog their memory. We'll look at the calendar and see if there are holidays, we'll ask about birthday parties or family gatherings,” Frederick told 6 News.
This is the same team that helped monitor Ebola patients and last year, link Hepatitis A to blackberries. Now they're on the front lines with other healthcare workers.
"Contact investigations are the tried and true to stop the virus because that is where you're getting to the people who have the virus and giving them direct recommendations for themselves and the people closest to them,” Frederick says.
The data the team collects at the Douglas County Health Department is a critical component in what local and state health leaders use to gauge where we standing in the effort to flatten the curve.
(Photo: 6 News)