contact trace

verb

contact traced; contact tracing; contact traces

intransitive verb

: to identify, notify, and monitor individuals who may have had close contact with a person having a confirmed or probable case of infectious disease : to engage in the practice of contact tracing

How well a college contact traces, places infected students in isolation, disseminates a steady stream of messaging to students about following safety practices and punishes offenders all have an impact on how much the virus spreads, [Gonzalo] Bearman said.

—Eric Kolenich

Campbell County Public Health … also contact traces for diseases like measles and whooping cough, where a dozen cases qualifies as an outbreak.

—Johnathan Gallardo and Mike Moore

Yet the only way we'll all win is if we'll do everything possible between now and then—wear a mask, wash our hands, socially distance, contact trace—to put this coronavirus permanently in our rearview mirror in order to return to our old normal every hour of every day.

—Mark Wiedmer

transitive verb

: to identify and notify (someone) through contact tracing

"Our school has done the best they can to keep us all as safe as possible, but I just happened to be in an unfortunate situation and ended being contact traced. I am choosing to focus on all of the positive experiences I had this season and the great memories I made with my team."

—Alexi Fogo

Examples of contact trace in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Loss of funding for testing and contact tracing, as well as vaccine development, would expand the scale and duration of the pandemic, costing many more lives. —Harold Hongju Koh, Foreign Affairs, 5 June 2020

By February, the national leadership had started to implement policies—strict quarantines, extensive testing, and abundant contact tracing—that proved highly effective in the pre-vaccination era. —Peter Hessler, The New Yorker, 1 Apr. 2024

Is contact tracing possible? Contact tracing, which became a household phrase during the COVID pandemic, is next to impossible to conduct for leprosy to pinpoint the origin of its transmission. —Michelle Marchante, Miami Herald, 28 Mar. 2024

The Lions entered the game with five coaches in quarantine due to COVID-19 contact tracing, including interim head coach Darrell Bevell and defensive coordinator Cory Undlin. —Jared Ramsey, Detroit Free Press, 19 Jan. 2024

Including this intermediate Amber Alert population could have significantly reduced the socioeconomic costs of contact tracing while retaining its epidemiological impact or could have increased its effectiveness for a similar cost. —Diana Gitig, Ars Technica, 20 Dec. 2023

Lessons on the power of contact tracing Remember contact tracing for Covid-19? —Elizabeth Cooney, STAT, 21 Dec. 2023

But isolation, contact tracing, and quarantine will quickly become infeasible in this case, because most SARS 2 infections are mild, and hospitals will run out of space to isolate these mild cases. —Benjamin Cowling, Foreign Affairs, 26 Feb. 2020

State health workers then set about the arduous task of contact tracing. —WIRED, 22 Sep. 2023

Word History

First Known Use

1987, in the meaning defined at intransitive sense

Medical Definition

contact trace

verb

intransitive verb

: to identify, notify, and monitor individuals who may have had close contact with a person having a confirmed or probable case of infectious disease : to engage in the practice of contact tracing

Campbell County Public Health … contact traces for diseases like measles and whooping cough, where a dozen cases qualifies as an outbreak.

—Johnathan Gallardo and Mike Moore, The Billings (Montana) Gazette

transitive verb

: to identify and notify (someone) through contact tracing

When a first major outbreak hit Grand Forks, North Dakota, in April, the problem was clear: More than 150 employees of a wind turbine blade factory were infected. The factory shut its doors for several weeks, and public health officials tested and contact traced each case.

—Sarah Mervosh and Lucy Tompkins, The Houston Chronicle