# What is contact tracing

Contact tracing involves identifying people who may have come into contact ("contacts") with an infected person (“case”) and then subsequent monitoring of said contacts’ health. We outline below how the three core steps of contact tracing can be used to contain COVID-19 outbreaks.

Most federal, state, and local public health departments already do contact tracing for other communicable diseases, meaning your jurisdiction likely has dedicated contact tracing infrastructure and budget. Elsewhere in this playbook we’ll address how to think about workforce expansion and building on existing infrastructure.

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[Three core steps](/what/three-core-steps.md)
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[Have questions? Get in touch with USDR](/about/have-questions-get-in-touch-with-usdr.md)
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