The work of the Army trackers to stop the second wave of infections in Madrid

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The Army is once again a key piece in controlling the spread of Covid in the region.

Since last Wednesday 100 soldiers have been working to discover people who have been in contact with a positive for coronavirus in the Community of Madrid and today another 50 soldiers will join the task.

and, therefore, they do not rest from Monday to Sunday in search of possible infected to achieve their isolation.

This anticovid Police belongs to the Guadarrama XII Brigade, the Artillery, the Navy and the Air Force and they have been trained for a week with the help of the Community of Madrid.

Trackers work on different shifts at the same time.

Everyone has their own fish tank, computer, and phone.

They have

on their computers

of the Community of Madrid.

The different sections of the Army are located in different places, but they have a single command, Commander Fernando García Reparaz, who is the head of the epidemiological surveillance unit of the Armed Forces.

At his side, Lieutenant Héctor Sánchez, head of the epidemiological section, also works.

«Each tracker takes an alert number for a PCR positive that the Community of Madrid has provided us with through a computer application.

Thanks to this, we have access to your telephone number and all your confidential clinical data.

We know on what date the PCR test was performed and where it was performed.

.

We have to find out their close and casual contacts and all of this makes tracking easier for us, according to the needs that the Community of Madrid has set us, ”explains Commander García Reparaz.

Most of those infected by Covid are very receptive to the call of the military.

They usually provide their personal data and tell if they have had a close relationship with more people or if they have been isolated at home without having contact with anyone.

“Once we analyze all that data and collect it, that case can lead to other contacts.

This is where we start to follow up, ”says the lieutenant.

Each PCR positive can derive an average of 10 calls from its environment.

«We usually ask for the name and telephone number of the people with whom the positive link has had a direct link so that we can call all those individuals and, in turn, tell us if they have symptoms or if they have had family meetings to continue collecting data and isolate more people if necessary.

In general,

”says Reparaz.

The military tracers present themselves first and ask the patient about his state of health.

“Good morning, I call you from the Army as a tracker.

The first thing is to know how he is, ”says the military man who has been trained to show special understanding with the patient.

"We are also here to reassure people,

" emphasizes the soldier.

“When we tell them that we are military, people relax and they know that we only intend to help.

We always try to give a feeling of calm, that we understand them, we try to appeal to the morale of each one, "says another of the military.

The questions about the state of health, physical and mental, are followed by the more "technical" to find out with whom the person has been seen and for how long and to follow up on those contacts.

Because the military have not only received training in empathy, but also in epidemiology to discern, for example,

These Covid hunters can spend anywhere from five minutes to half an hour to engage in conversation with young people, the elderly or people with previous pathologies who have tested positive in PCR tests.

Everything depends on each case.

There are times when a person we call may not have been in contact with anyone and the interview is very simple, ”says the lieutenant.

“If the positive has been directly related to more people, it

or has had a social event or meeting.

We have a procedure to find out if these people have been infected and we must act to locate them, "says the lieutenant.

More technical advice

Each of the five sections has an officer from the military health corps who offers more technical advice if necessary "All the information collected by the tracker is attached to a database of the Community of Madrid and, in complicated cases or that can generate an outbreak, the medical staff of the Ministry of Health can be transferred immediately ", argues Lieutenant Sánchez.

All

and "the only requirement was that they have the facility to develop empathy, that they are close and that they handle computer tools perfectly," adds the commander.

There is also the circumstance that some of the trackers already worked in

in April and May, when the Army participated in the disinfection of residences and was deployed on the street during confinement.

At the moment, they have not assigned any neighborhood in the capital or municipality of Madrid, and no predetermined numerical objective has been set for them.

For them,

in order to help as much as possible to solve this health crisis as soon as possible.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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