to approximately 100 tracers, the calls have decreased for Davis. “Back in September, I was calling people for my entire shift non-stop,” Davis said. “Now, it is slowing down a little bit, and we do have more contact tracers. We have a lot more time to answer phones and help each other out.” No matter how many people they have to call, the contact tracers have one common goal. “Stop the spread as much as possible,” Davis said. “That’s really the whole point of what we’re doing.” *** In March, Davis knew to be cautious. But she didn’t understand the severity of the virus and its spread until she returned to campus and talked to people with positive cases. “After going through the contact tracing process,” Davis said, “I’ve seen people just having a headache for a couple days to being in the hospital, unable to breathe on their own.” During one shift, she dialed a number from her spreadsheet, as usual. When the woman picked up the phone, Davis introduced herself and began asking questions. But Davis had called her right as the women had come home from the hospital. “She was so out of breath and could not talk to me,” Davis said. Davis gave her a call-back number and let the older woman settle in before their interview. “That really put it into perspective for me that this is a really serious virus,” Davis said. “It’s impacting people so differently than anything we’ve seen before and it really should be taken seriously.”
“STOP THE SPREAD AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE, THAT’S REALLY THE WHOLE POINT OF WHAT WE’RE DOING.”
Despite students’ casual attitude about the virus, it still has lasting impacts on others in the community. “It might not affect us as young people as severely as others, but it really can have a detrimental impact on the health of older people or immunocompromised,” Davis said. Her new perspective on the virus has caused a ripple effect in her personal life. “It has definitely decreased my time out in public,” Davis said. “Going through this project, when somebody is exposed and we ask them where they’ve been the past couple days, there are a few places that come up pretty frequently, so I have been avoiding those places.” Brick Street and Fiesta Charra are two major “hotspots” that Davis said have appeared frequently in her interviews. Luckily, no one in Davis’s house off-campus has had contact with COVID-19 and they haven’t had to quarantine. Davis has been tested once as of late August, and one of her roommates has been randomly selected three times as of late October. “In terms of my housemates and I, we are very cautious of who we are all around,” Davis said. “For the most part, we try to stay with the same few people.”
*** A few months into contact tracing, Davis had to complete extra training for the Ohio COVID Database. She got promoted to a new project that follows up on symptoms of close contact cases.
THE MIAMI STUDENT MAGAZINE, FALL 2020
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