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August 7, 20205:02 AM ET
SELENA SIMMONS-DUFFIN
The United States needs as many as 100,000 contact tracers to fight the pandemic, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told Congress in June. We need billions of dollars to fund them, public health leaders pleaded in April.
But in August, with coronavirus cases increasing in more than half of states, America has neither the staff nor the resources to be able to trace the contacts of every new case — a key step in the COVID-19 public health response.
Contact tracers call each person who has just tested positive and track down their contacts to inform them of their risk so they can quarantine. They also often connect people with services in order to safely isolate. It takes workers, time and organization, but it's proven effective in controlling infectious diseases.
... Despite some enthusiasm about contact tracing early in the pandemic, the U.S. contact tracing workforce continues to fall short of projected need. NPR's latest survey of all 50 states, done in collaboration with the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, finds the national workforce has barely grown since mid June.
Only three states — Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont — along with Washington, D.C., currently have enough workers to investigate their coronavirus cases, according to an NPR analysis of how contact tracing staffing matches up with need. Three more states — Michigan, Montana and Hawaii — have enough when reserve staff are included. And 39states do not have enough.
SELENA SIMMONS-DUFFIN
The United States needs as many as 100,000 contact tracers to fight the pandemic, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told Congress in June. We need billions of dollars to fund them, public health leaders pleaded in April.
But in August, with coronavirus cases increasing in more than half of states, America has neither the staff nor the resources to be able to trace the contacts of every new case — a key step in the COVID-19 public health response.
Contact tracers call each person who has just tested positive and track down their contacts to inform them of their risk so they can quarantine. They also often connect people with services in order to safely isolate. It takes workers, time and organization, but it's proven effective in controlling infectious diseases.
... Despite some enthusiasm about contact tracing early in the pandemic, the U.S. contact tracing workforce continues to fall short of projected need. NPR's latest survey of all 50 states, done in collaboration with the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, finds the national workforce has barely grown since mid June.
Only three states — Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont — along with Washington, D.C., currently have enough workers to investigate their coronavirus cases, according to an NPR analysis of how contact tracing staffing matches up with need. Three more states — Michigan, Montana and Hawaii — have enough when reserve staff are included. And 39states do not have enough.