As multiple states race to assemble their own contract tracing teams, state health departments tell ABC News the task is monumental—and some say they need more help from the federal government.
Called"disease detectives," they will track down and isolate people who test positive for novel coronavirus.-positive person has significantly interacted, is seen by experts as one of the keys to halting the spread of the deadly disease. But as multiple states now race to put together their own contract tracing teams, state health departments told ABC News the task is monumental and some said they need more help from the federal government.
Vice President Pence said this week that the CDC would be deploying teams of 10 to 12 people to each state to assist the local efforts on 12-to 18-month rotations, and recently CDC Director Robert Redfield suggested his agency would work with states to deploy many more people. But some lawmakers say the federal government will need to do much more for contact tracing in order to help states safely re-open the country.Gov.
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In New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio said “thousands and thousands” of contact tracers would be put to work identifying potential coronavirus carriers who will be isolated in hotels bought out by the city. New York state, which alone has experienced a higher number of cases than any single country outside the U.S.
Public health nurse Lee Cherie Booth conducts a test for COVID-19 outside of the Salt Lake City Public Health Center, accompanied by Salt Lake County infectious disease nurse Travis Langston, April 10, 2020. When a swab test comes back positive, contact tracing starts. Local health departments try to reach and assess everyone a person has come in contact with from two days before symptoms to the time test results come back.
She said the process is"like a web that can potentially go and go and go if people don’t stay put... . Hopefully there’s enough education out there that people can be smart." In Rhode Island, 100 members of the National Guard are assisting the effort alongside 140 staffers from the health department. The state is also partnering with the global software company SalesForce which is creating a database to allow for the Guard and their department of health “to do contact tracing more efficiently and effectively.”
But even with technological help, the main challenge remains the colossal size of the task and the basic need for more people, Nevada health department spokesperson Shannon Litz said.CDC Director Robert Redfield told state governors this week that contact tracing “is really an important component of the guidelines to open America again,” according to an audio recording of the call obtained by ABC News.
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