Most of the people Nasrin Sultana calls each week don’t answer on the first try. The ones who do are often skeptical when they pick up the phone.
Some think Sultana is trying to steal their identity. Even after she insists that the only personal information she needs is their name and date of birth, not their Social Security number or their bank account info, they’re wary of divulging.
Sultana is not a scammer. She’s a volunteer contact tracer for Florida’s Larkin Community Hospital. On top of her clinical assistant and coronavirus research work, she spends 20 hours a week calling people who have tested positive for Covid-19 at the South Miami hospital or have come into close contact with someone who has. She wants to ask them a series of questions about their health, their living situations, and who they’ve recently had prolonged contact with.
Read more at Bloomberg CityLab.