Contact Tracing Playbook
  • Contact Tracing Playbook
  • What is contact tracing
    • Three core steps
    • Who is responsible
    • Manual vs. digital
    • Asymptomatic cases
    • Things to consider
  • Contact tracing programs
    • Federal
    • States
    • City / County
  • How to do contact tracing
    • Workforce expansion
    • Laboratory testing
    • Isolation and quarantine
    • Monitoring and evaluation
    • Data management
      • Legal & data sharing frameworks
      • Negotiating data rights with vendors
    • Technology enablement
    • Review of vendors
  • Other resources
  • Glossary
  • Other Playbooks
  • About USDR
    • Authors
    • Have questions? Get in touch with USDR
Powered by GitBook
On this page
  • Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) testing
  • Asymptomatic testing
  • Serology testing

Was this helpful?

  1. How to do contact tracing

Laboratory testing

Testing is essential to "slowing the spread"

PreviousWorkforce expansionNextIsolation and quarantine

Last updated 5 years ago

Was this helpful?

Increasing testing capacity and ensuring rapid turnaround time (from symptoms, to testing, to test result delivery to both the patient and the health department) are key to “slowing the spread”.

Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) testing

Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) testing is for COVID-19. For contact tracing to be most effective, PCR testing should be widespread and available to all people showing symptoms. The CDC provides .

Asymptomatic testing

There is , and it is likely that a significant proportion of patients would test positive for COVID-19 without symptoms (e.g., ).

Contact tracing will not prevent transmission from untested asymptomatic cases. Because asymptomatic testing accuracy and feasibility rates are still preliminary, even if communities do test asymptomatic contacts, negative results would not change quarantine recommendations. The CDC of people diagnosed with COVID-19.

Serology testing

Serology testing for COVID-19 to identify past infection and presumed immunity is , and its role and potential use in contact tracing is still unclear. In particular, and must be further validated before guiding decision-making.

the current gold standard
detailed recommendations for testing protocol and best practices
increasing evidence of transmission from asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic cases
20% in South Korea; 50% in Iceland
provides guidance on testing asymptomatic contacts
still being developed
sensitivity and specificity of serology tests vary widely
Isolation and quarantine