The team has existed for a long time, but has grown almost 20 fold as the risk of coronavirus has grown.

Members of the team are usually public health nurses and their job is to help prevent outbreaks of deadly diseases.

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Ms Tiplady, manager of public health response at the Department of Health, described the team as a group of nurse detectives.

"Contact tracing is essentially detective work ... with a main aim to identify people who came into contact with someone who is infectious," she said.

"We interview the case once we've been notified and work with them to do a really in-depth interview to help them think about who they've come in contact with and where they've been.

"It obviously relies on people's memory and their recall so it is really a specialised skill."

Ms Tiplady has worked across Australia as a contact tracer.

She discovered the career path while studying a masters of public health at the University of Sydney.

"I've worked in this field ever since. It is really interesting and important and rewarding work - it's time critical and I feel really proud that this work is now being acknowledged by the wider community and my friends and family who finally understand the work that I do," she said.

She said the COVID-19 pandemic was unlike anything she had worked on before.

"I've done work previously on large measles outbreaks in Victoria, we've responded to outbreaks of q fever here locally as well as ... meningococcal here a few years ago," Ms Tiplady said.

"The work we do is often in the background and if we're doing our job well people don't know about the work we do.

"This is unlike anything I have worked in before and it is hugely challenging and rapidly evolving but it is professionally the most rewarding work I have ever worked on."

Earlier this year the North-West of Tasmania experienced a strict lockdown as an outbreak of coronavirus spread through their hospitals and community.

It is nothing compared to the scale of the outbreak in Victoria but Ms Tiplady, who has worked to help control the spread during both outbreaks, said both situations presented unique challenges.

"At the time that I entered Victoria things were already at a point where there was significant community transmission which obviously put a lot of strain on the workforce there in terms of responding to consecutive days with very high case numbers," she said.

"The challenges in the North-West were very different because they involved the health services there and presented its own unique challenges."

She said if the public was to know one thing about contact tracing it was that they are here to help.

"This is the most important tool that we have to protect the community from coronavirus," Ms Tiplady said.

"We don't have the luxury of having a vaccine or having antibiotics or another tool to protect people so we really rely on the cooperation of people.

"The message here is whilst we are not in the same situation that they have in Victoria this is a very real threat and we need everyone to work together."

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