California's plans to build an army of 10,000 people that can trace the trail of the coronavirus exposure could serve as a template for the nation and create a whole new sector of public health workers
The state initially used contact tracing as a containment strategy early in the pandemic before cases skyrocketed, back when there was hope that public health officials could isolate the virus and protect the greater public. But rapid community transmission in March, coupled with a lack of testing availability, forced states and the nation to shift toward stay-at-home orders.
Given the state’s population, 10,000 tracers put the state on the low end but within the ballpark of what California would need, said Cyrus Shahpar, a Bay Area epidemiologist who serves as director of preventing epidemics at Resolve to Save Lives, a nonprofit that advises governments. The state would need a minimum of 12,000 to a maximum of 36,000 tracers, based on national estimates of 100,000 to 300,000.
“For each of those persons that we are contact tracing, we want to be able to contact them. We want to be able to check their status, offer testing and recommend isolation or quarantine to start in isolation as necessary,” explained Mark Ghaly, secretary of the state Health and Human Services Agency.
Experienced public health case investigators will first make the initial contact with the infected person and gather as much information as possible about the individual's potential contacts. Those details will be passed on to the contact tracers, who do the follow-up work.
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