The state’s growing army of contact tracers have contacted roughly 11% of the more than 34,000 Georgians who have tested positive so far for COVID-19, according to an analysis of Department of Public Health numbers released Tuesday.
The new figures were released shortly after Public Health Commissioner Kathleen Toomey told reporters her department plans to quadruple the number of trained contact tracers by June 23.
“We’re incrementally increasing our capacity every day,” Toomey said during a press conference with Gov. Brian Kemp.
Before the coronavirus, Georgia employed 250 tracers to contain the spread of infectious diseases such as tuberculosis and HIV. In addition to deploying those staffers to cover the coronavirus, Toomey wants to hire up to 750 additional tracers, including student interns from the state’s medical and public health colleges.
Tracers have already reached out to more than 3,800 people who have tested positive for COVID-19, as well as 13,000 of their close contacts, DPH said.
At Tuesday’s press conference, Kemp and Toomey urged Georgians to cooperate with the contact tracers if they are contacted.
“We need your help to defeat this virus,” said Kemp.
Tracers reach out to people who test positive for COVID-19 and ask who they’ve been in close contact with for at least 15 minutes starting from 48 hours before illness onset. The tracers then reach out to those close contacts and urge them to isolate for 14 days and log their symptoms into a new online monitoring platform, the Healthy Georgia Collaborative, using their smartphone.
https://www.ajc.com/news/state--reg...ntact-tracing-program/6H0ORxDM2v403T6Dbq7ffJ/