China’s coronavirus hunters adopt Sherlock Holmes’ methods to trace patients
- By meticulously retracing the steps of infected people, Shanghai’s epidemiology surveyors work to halt community spread of disease
- Their profession is largely unknown to the public, but their role in the latest disease outbreak has been crucial
While Shanghai is a long way from 221B Baker Street, and she has no supportive Dr Watson at her side, epidemiologist Gong Xiaohuan has been assiduously following the clues, like a modern-day Holmes, as one of the city’s 700-odd “virus hunters”.
For months Gong, 32, has been tracking and chasing down coronavirus patients in the city, closely questioning them and their relatives to find out who they have been in contact with in a bid to halt the spread of the disease in the east China metropolis.
“For any person confirmed or suspected to have contracted the coronavirus, we will ask them what they do, where they have been and whom they have met in the past 14 days so we can form a picture of their activity trajectory,” Gong said.
“Our job is very much like a police investigation and we must be very careful and patient.”
Before the epidemic, Gong, an epidemiology surveyor for Shanghai’s Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, monitored and investigated intestinal infections. She was sent to investigate her first coronavirus case in January – a woman in her 50s who had arrived in Shanghai from Wuhan, where the first cases were reported in December, to visit her daughter.