The most populous counties in California, Florida, Illinois and Texas are scrambling to hire enough people to trace the contacts of those who test positive for COVID-19. AP_Christina.
In this Wednesday, May 13, 2020 photo, Meghan Peck works on contact tracing at the Florida Dept. of Health in Miami-Dade County, during the new coronavirus pandemic, in Doral, Fla. In state after state, the local health departments charged with doing the detective work of running down the contacts of coronavirus patients are falling well short of the number of people needed to do the job.
With 2.7 million residents and roughly 100 to 300 new COVID-19 cases a day, Miami-Dade County has 175 people tracking down people who were potentially exposed to the virus. Officials in Cook County, which has the highest number of cases in Illinois outside of Chicago, have said they need at least 200 additional contact tracers and as many as 400 to supplement the work of the 29 currently on staff. Illinois has maintained a statewide stay-at-home order since late March, and Gov. J.B. Pritzker has said the state needs a “massive statewide contact tracing operation.”
Contact tracing was one of the “core state preparedness responsibilities” outlined in the White House guidelines for reopening the country, but governors have been pressing ahead with lifting restrictions without having comprehensive programs in place. During congressional testimony this past week, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci,that parts of the U.S. might be easing restrictions too early without having the ability to respond effectively to an increase in cases with “good identification, isolation and contact tracing.”
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