BOWLING GREEN, Ohio — Pat Snyder is one of the seven original contact tracers working for the Wood County Health Department.
"In the beginning, up until 6 months into this we had about 7 of us that were doing contact tracing throughout the entire county," Snyder said.
Like many contact tracers, Snyder has not had a lot of vacation time this year.
And her job has become even more hectic in the past few weeks, as COVID-19 case numbers go up. Now, for the first time this year, contact tracers were not able to finish a day's worth of case contacts.
"We were not able to get to every case every day. And we were really proud of ourselves for being able to keep up on that up until recently. But the numbers have just gotten so bad that we have really just fallen behind," she said.
The Wood County health department is likely not the only health department experiencing this issue. The agency recently hired about a dozen independent contact tracers to help keep up. Regardless, officials are asking everyone to take it upon themselves to follow the rules issued by the CDC and Ohio Department of Health.
"If I can call someone that's a case and ask who they've been around closer than 6 feet for more than 15 minutes and they can tell me no one that's perfect," Snyder said.
Monitor your symptoms and stay away from others, especially if you knowingly come into contact with someone who is COVID-19 positive.
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