Basics
An infectious respiratory disease caused by a new (novel) coronavirus.
Coronavirus Disease 2019 or COVID-19
A person under the age of 18.
Minor
The United States' federal health protection organization and a major operating component of the federal Department of Health and Human Services.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or CDC
The company manufacturing a one-dose COVID-19 vaccine.
Johnson & Johnson
Keeping people away from each other to help stop the spread of disease.
Quarantine
Not showing any signs of disease or illness.
Asymptomatic
A person identified who was with someone who tested positive for COVID-19 for 15 minutes or more at a distance of less than 6 feet. This person also follows quarantine guidance.
Close contact or contact or Individual Exposure or IE
A federal law requiring the protection of sensitive health information from being disclosed without a patient's consent.
Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act or HIPAA
The person or people legally responsible for a minor under the age of 18.
Parent or Guardian
Two companies manufacturing two-dose COVID-19 vaccines.
Moderna and Pfizer
Separating sick people from healthy people to prevent spreading illness
Isolation
This period of time is the average length of quarantine and isolation periods.
5 days
Another term for close contact used in CTMS.
Individual Exposure or IE
Maintaining the privacy and protection of information, including not providing the infected patient’s identity to contacts.
Confidentiality
This staff person calls close contacts who have been exposed to a COVID-19 case to prevent additional infection and transmissions, and provides official quarantine order, educational guidance, and resources as needed.
Individual Exposure (IE) Call Team contact tracer or CTMS Outbound contact tracer
A secure, online system that facilitates electronically transferring public health surveillance data from the healthcare system to public health departments.
National Electronic Disease Surveillance System or NEDSS
An application close contact or IEs utilize for self-monitoring and reporting symptoms.
Sara Alert
A secure, cloud-based computer system used to manage contact tracing efforts in Pennsylvania.
Contact Tracing Management System or CTMS
A person who has a positive COVID-19 test result or is showing symptoms after close contact with a COVID-19 case. This person also follows isolation guidance.
Case
Information that may directly or indirectly identify an individual or that relates to an identifiable person, i.e. name, address, date of birth, etc.
Personally Identifiable Information or PII
This staff person answers incoming calls from 1-877-PAHEALTH line about COVID.
Inbound Call Team contact tracer
People are considered _____ _____ 2 weeks after their second dose of a two-dose COVID-19 vaccine or 2 weeks after a single-dose COVID-19 vaccine.
Fully vaccinated
A mobile phone app used to help Pennsylvanians protect each other and slow the spread of COVID-19 by sending notifications of potential exposures.
COVID Alert PA Mobile App or Mobile App
The subsequent identification, monitoring, and support of a confirmed or probable COVID-19 case's close contacts who have been exposed to, and possibly infected with, the virus.
Contact Tracing
Someone tested and confirmed with laboratory evidence to have COVID-19.
Confirmed COVID-19 case or confirmed case
Information transmitted or maintained in any form of media by a HIPAA-covered entity that identifies an individual.
Protected Health Information or PHI
This staff person contacts positive cases within NEDSS who are high-risk cases, reviews symptoms and the case’s health status, and provides Isolation orders.
Case Investigator
A secure, cloud-based customer relationship management (CRM) software that is the system used for CTMS.
Salesforce
A digital questionnaire used to complete case investigation.
Connect and Protect form
People living in the same residence.
Household
A person with COVID-19 symptoms who has had contact with another person with COVID-19 but who does not have a laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 diagnosis.
Probable case
A person who has the authority to represent someone else, like a parent/guardian, caregiver, court-appointed advocate.
Proxy
This staff person calls positive cases who are NOT high-risk cases to provide isolation guidance and sends the Connect & Protect form to cases to complete case investigation and gather close contacts.
Case Investigation Questionnaire (CIQ) Case Call Team contact tracer or CIQ Team contact tracer
A type of COVID-19 test that is the dominant way global healthcare systems are testing for COVID-19, mostly conducted via nasal swab.
Polymerase Chain Reaction test or PCR test
The spread of an illness within a particular location, like a neighborhood or town, where there is no clear source of contact or infection.
Community spread
A branch of medicine that studies disease and community spread.
Epidemiology or Epi