Contact management is the approach to fight the COVID-19 pandemic after the lockdown. When implementing this principle, the so-called Contact Tracers are of central importance because they are responsible for tracing the corona cases. In practice, it works like this: As soon as a person has a positive test for COVID-19, the contact tracers connect with that person. Together they reconstruct the probable or possible time and place of infection and all more significant  personal interactions over the preceding few days where other people could have been infected. The contact tracer then also contacts these people to inform them that they must quarantine for 10 days.

What sounds so simple is actually a demanding task and requires in-depth knowledge of the epidemiological objectives of contact tracing and aspects such as data protection. Since contact tracing has not been used in Switzerland outside of cantonal medical services, hospitals and [the charity] Lung League, the professionals had to be trained first. The time to achieve this by the end of April 2020 was very short. Within two weeks, an online course was created together with the Cantonal Medical Office in Bern, which in addition to the learning materials included a test and a final certificate. The course was implemented within the ILIAS Learning Management System at the University of Bern. This online learning offer is not publically available.


Dr. med. et MME Ulrich Woermann-Walthert Scientific collaborator, Head of Group learning media

+41 31 684 62 48
ulrich.woermann (at) unibe.ch