COVID-19 Contact Tracing

TCU, along with colleges and universities across the country, are working diligently to limit the spread of COVID-19 on our campuses. One of the best ways we can accomplish this goal is through contact tracing once a TCU community member is confirmed to be sick with the virus.

Contact tracing is a proven method and public health tool used for decades to help slow and hopefully contain the spread of infectious diseases (Texas Department of State Health Services). Contact tracing is used daily by public health officials around the world to help slow the spread of infectious diseases such as SARS, Tuberculosis, and Ebola (Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine).

Contact tracing is a method used to find and follow up with people who have been in close contact with someone who tested positive for COVID-19 … by tracing the contacts of COVID-19 cases [patients], getting them into quarantine, and when necessary, testing them for infection, we can slow the spread of coronavirus (Texas Department of State Health Services, 2020, para 2).

Contact tracing will be conducted by TCU Faculty and Staff. These volunteers have gone through significant training to learn how to conduct contact tracing quickly, effectively and ethically.

If you (or your horned frog student) is contacted by one of these volunteers, we ask that you assist them in reviewing friends, residential community members, classmates and fellow horned frogs you may have been in contact with beginning with two days BEFORE your symptoms began. Once the tracers have worked with you to identify those individuals who you may have been in contact with, they will reach out to them, inform them they may have been exposed to a fellow horned frog who has tested positive for coronavirus, review with them resources (both on and off campus) that are available to them, and ask them to self-quarantine for at least 14 days (as long as they do not begin to show signs and symptoms of having developed the virus). At NO time will the tracers, or any other member of the contact tracing team share your confidential medical information, including your name, with individuals you may have been in contact with. Failure to work openly with a contact tracer will result in the University bringing a student conduct case against the student for 3.2.9: Failure to Comply with University Authority.