"Compared to the first time around, we're getting a lot of pushback as far as cooperation goes," Pittsfield Public Health Nurse Manager Kayla Donnelly says. "Some people just won't even answer us. Some people will hang up on us or — and I'm just going to come out and say — people are verbally abusive towards us a lot."
Pittsfield contact tracer Rosa Tobango sifts through data from her home office. The spread of the COVID-19 delta variant has sent case counts trending upward in Pittsfield and Berkshire County, and after more than 18 months of work, contact tracers and nurses interviewed by The Eagle a year ago who said they were impressed with how conscientious county residents were toward one another and toward the public health staff now say their calls and advice are being politicized.
Pittsfield contact tracer Rosa Tobango sifts through data from her home office. Tobango said contract tracers often are fighting against a large ecosystem of misinformation fueled by memes, armchair experts and faulty science. Some of their patients are misinformed; others are just obviously noncompliant
The contract tracers say that more and more often they are getting pushback on their recommendations for patients to quarantine, wear a mask and get one of three available coronavirus vaccines. "There's no COVID police," says Public Health Nursing Coordinator Pat Tremblay. "We're all trying to bring health, wellness and prosperity to this community by helping to manage this virus."
Ben Garver
Photojournalist
Ben Garver has been photographing the Berkshire hills and people for The Eagle since 1994. In his spare time, Garver enjoys hiking and biking with his Australian cattle dog, Cheyenne.
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The seven-person team of Pittsfield's Public Health Department is seeing a shift in the public's response to their efforts to track the coronavirus.
"Compared to the first time around, we're getting a lot of pushback as far as cooperation goes," Pittsfield Public Health Nurse Manager Kayla Donnelly said. "Some people just won't even answer us. Some people will hang up on us or — and I'm just going to come out and say — people are verbally abusive towards us a lot."