Stephanie Meyer, Dept. of Health, Region 9 Director

I’m proud to be part of the incredible team at MDH where everyone is involved. I’m a senior epidemiologist and work on the case investigation team where we contact confirmed COVID-19 patients, talk with them about their exposures, find out who they’ve been in close contact with and handle isolation and quarantine.

We also follow up with healthcare workers to ensure we have a healthy workforce in our hospitals, clinics, long-term care settings, group homes and many others.

We are trying to draw a circle around each case, find the contacts, isolate, quarantine where needed, and move to the next case. If we can contain illness in these spaces it makes a difference to the bigger burden on our healthcare system.

I’m grateful for the distance learning and emergency care my kids are able to receive. I have four kids and I wonder what happens if I get COVID-19? What if one of my kids get it? It keeps me up at night. 

This is also why we’re trying to work with our agency to operationalize remote work. As careful as we are, we know it’s likely that someone here will get it. And then what happens? We’re working toward solutions to keep ourselves safe and keep our operations running smoothly.