Why Contact Tracing Isn’t Working in the U.S.
A look at why there are still few programs
Why is the United States still not doing aggressive contact tracing? As Keren Landman, MD reports for Elemental, contract tracing is not going well for the U.S. She writes:
The United States has been providing federal funding for contact tracing since the Department of Health and Human Services announced its first wave of financial support for the strategy in late April. But the implementation of contact tracing programs has unfolded in wildly uneven ways across the nation: In some states, such as Washington, California, and Massachusetts, massive programs employing thousands of workers are reaching enormous numbers of Covid-19-infected people and their contacts, while in others, public health leaders are still dithering over such a program’s best design. And the size of states’ contact tracing efforts do not always track with slowdowns in their infection rates.
If experts are correct, nearly 100,000 contact tracers are needed to conduct adequate and efficient contact tracing for Covid-19 in the U.S. Although in flux, the current number of contact tracers at work is likely well below that figure. Last week, CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield testified that about 27,000 or 28,000 people were doing contact tracing work across the country at the beginning of June. (As of June 26, there’s no update on the current number of contact tracers.)
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