The New York City contact tracking team will be put to the test in the winter, amid a further increase in Covid-19 cases, which is expected to continue during the holiday season.
While the introduction of Covid-19 vaccines has given New Yorkers hope that the worst part of the pandemic will end in 2021, the city still has to navigate a difficult winter. The seven-day average of new and probable cases of Covid-19 in New York exceeded 3,000 for most of December, compared to about 250 new cases daily in early September.
Ted Long, executive director of the city’s Covid-19 Test and Trace Corps, said his team is preparing for the moment. The body added 1,000 members over the summer and now has a total of 4,000 employees.
“We have staff and are prepared to handle all cases through growth,” said Dr. Long.
Tracking contacts remains one of the most important tools for public health officials to stop the spread of Covid-19. The contact team of the city is in contact with people who have tested positive for Covid-19 and others who may have been exposed to let them know that they should self-quarantine to avoid making others sick. It also offers to help people access medical care and offers to bring people to a hotel for free if they cannot isolate themselves at home.
A worker with test and tracking troops in New York City distributed masks and information at the Staten Island ferry terminal last month.
Photo:
brendan mcdermid / Reuters
The city’s contact tracking program started early, but has improved. In the first few weeks of the program, in June, only half of the people who reached the follow-up contacts completed the admission process, which involves answering a series of questions, according to the Test and Trace team. Now three out of four people complete the consumption.
Only 35% of the people accessed by the contact tracers gave the names and information of the people they could have exposed in the first two weeks of the program in June, according to the Test and Trace team. Now, 64% of people who complete the admissions process share contact information and about 18% say they have not had contacts to share because they have not had significant recent interactions in person, Dr. Long said.
Dr. Long said his team focused on hiring contacts who lived in the neighborhoods most affected by the pandemic to build trust in those communities to get more people to cooperate with tracking contacts. They also deploy people to track contacts in person, when someone cannot be contacted by phone. And at city-run testing facilities, there are handy contact followers to start the process if someone takes a quick test and gives positive results.
Robert Amler, dean of the School of Health Sciences and Practices at New York Medical College, said many of the results of the city’s testing and monitoring team are impressive. A response rate of 64 percent of contacts is good and comparable to other, less severe outbreaks of other diseases, he said. The percentage of people who complete the contribution – about 75% of people have arrived – is “very, very good,” he said.
While New York has done well in reaching individuals, the job could become more difficult in the coming weeks, said Amanda Castel, a professor in the epidemiology department at the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University. .
“As we move further into the pandemic, I think what we see is that part of that Covid fatigue that we see in people’s behavior we see in the ability to reach individuals and really get information. complete about their potential. contacts and to reach these contacts as well “, said Dr. Castel.
Mayor Bill de Blasio said New York’s public schools will close on Thursday and move to distance learning. The city has reached the 3% Covid-19 seven-day threshold of the average positivity rate for stopping in-person training. (Originally published on November 18.) Photo: Wang Ying / Xinhua / Zuma Press
Other parts of the tri-state region are already struggling with this. In New Jersey, nearly 80% of those who reached follow-up contacts refused to provide the names and information of people they had potentially exposed to Covid-19.
The steady increase in infection rates will also be a challenge, adding to the workload for the city’s contact tracking team. Jackie Bray, deputy executive director of the New York Test and Tracking Corps, said the program was hired over the summer to avoid having to hire and train during a second hike.
“They’ve earned months of work at work and are really prepared when we have more cases and the systems we use are more stressed,” said Ms. Bray.
Casey de Pont, 35, said she was recently contacted by the city’s contact tracking team after attending a court meeting in Brooklyn, where a person later tested positive for Covid. -19. After his initial phone call with the contact tracking device, he later received a care package from the contact tracking program, which included hand and mask disinfectant, as well as a Covid-19 home test kit.
When she received the care package, Ms. de Pont had already given negative results in two Covid-19 tests and did not have to use the test at home. She intends to stay if she needs a test in the future, she said.
Ms de Pont said she was happy to cooperate with the contact tracking devices and said it was important for the public to share the contacts if they had been potentially exposed to Covid-19.
“I could understand how it feels invasive, but we are in mitigating circumstances right now,” Ms de Pont said. “So there are some things that are awkward, you just have to do it.”
—Melanie Grayce West contributed to this article.
Write to Joseph De Avila to [email protected]
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