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By
NICK GOSNELL
Hutch
Post
HUTCHINSON,
Kan. —&nbsp;An issue that continues to be a problem for the contact tracers at the Reno County Health Department is refusals to give information."We don't dwell on that a whole lot when we're talking about it, but it is still an issue that people don't want to talk about who they've been with," Hammersmith said. "They don't answer the phone. They're avoiding us."Data analyst DJ Gering says that for the month of October, there was around a 10% refusal rate. With the flood of cases thus far in November, they haven't been able to follow up on the numbers for this month yet."They're refusing to answer questions," Hammersmith said. "Refusing to tell them what church they go to, they've been around absolutely no one, those types of things. We can't notify people if we haven't heard."The Health Department also can't confirm rumors of illness if someone hears that someone they may have been around has been infected."I'm bound by HIPAA, so I can't really say, yes, this person has it or not," Hammersmith said. "They're questioning why they weren't called and I can see an investigation was done and there are no contacts in there and sometimes a person even documents, the patient refused to leave any contacts. How do you tell somebody, you're not on a list because the person didn't identify you or didn't identify anyone, because I can't even tell them that I have a list with that patient."Earlier on in the pandemic, the health department had just a handful of refusals, but it's been worse this fall.

Refusals to give information make it tough for contact tracers