It's painstaking, disruptive and yet potentially life-saving: for every confirmed coronavirus case health authorities face a race against time to identify everyone the patient has been in contact with and nip transmission in the bud.
"The goal is to contain the outbreak and break transmission channels," health ministry official Bruno Coignard told AFP. Those in the final category are individuals with whom a patient would have been in"close contact, face to face, less than a metre for a period of at least 10-15 minutes" according to Coignard.
They receive daily calls from health workers to ensure they adhere to self-quarantine. In France, workers are eligible for compensation for the days they spend at home.While they are also instructed to take temperatures twice daily and contact a doctor if they develop symptoms, they are allowed to go out during the monitoring period.
In one example case, a 64-year-old man hospitalised in France provided a list of 60"contact subjects"."It probably depends on the amount of virus each individual excretes, on their social life between the moment they start showing signs and when they are isolated," he said.