A sister unaware that she had a brother discovered the fact 32 years later, thanks to a crew of contact tracers looking for her relatives.

Contact tracers, a new profession during the coronavirus pandemic, go door to door to check on possible contacts of positive patients and to deliver drugs against the disease for people in self-isolation.

35-year-old Filiz Varol was one such patient. She lives in Istanbul’s Esenyurt district and tested positive for coronavirus in November. Contact tracing crews reached the woman and checked all close relatives, to see whether they came into contact with Varol.

In their efforts to break the cycle of infection, they checked the civic register and found out she had an elder brother. They telephoned the brother, 52-year-old Yaşar Varol, to tell him that his sister tested positive and he should have a test as well if he came into contact with her. Yaşar Varol was surprised as he was looking for his sister for years, to no avail. His sister, however, was unaware that she had a brother.

"My parents were divorced when I was 3 and I did not stay with neither of them. None of them told me that I had an older brother,” Filiz Varol says. Yaşar is from her father’s first marriage, while she has four other brothers from her mother's first husband.

The two siblings were reunited after Filiz Varol’s quarantine ended. Yaşar immediately traveled to Istanbul from the central province of Niğde, where he lived, to reunite with his sister.

"I still cannot believe it. Contact tracers worked like detectives and gave me a brother I never knew. It took a long time but I am glad I met him. He was so glad to see me too. Even though it has been many years, we still have this sibling bond,” she said.