The Riveras waited for that phone call. And I waited And I waited But the call never came.
“It surprised me,” said Rivera, a nurse who has since recovered from her attack with the virus.
Despite claims that Florida tracks every Covid-19 case, a CNN investigation found that health authorities in Florida, now the country’s number 1 access point for the virus, often fail to trace contacts, during long considered a key tool to contain an outbreak.
Florida set a record for most cases of coronavirus in the US in a single day on Saturday, totaling 11,458, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University, and on Sunday, the state topped 200,000 cases. from Covid-19.
Florida’s contact tracking challenges are indicative of how difficult it is for Covid-19 affected states to do proper contact tracking, which is a challenge even in the best of circumstances. The virus is so advanced in states like Florida that it is an apparently Herculean task to track down each infected person and keep track of all their close contacts.
CNN spoke to 27 Floridians, or their family members, who had tested positive for Covid-19. Of these, only five said they had received a call from the health authorities asking for their contacts.
There are concerns about contact tracking nationwide, not just in Florida. In an interview in June, CNN asked Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, how he believed contact tracking was going in the United States.
“I don’t think we are doing very well,” he replied.
What is contact tracking?
Tracing contacts is a centuries-old practice, and the basics haven’t changed much: essentially, healthcare workers ask infected people for a list of everyone they’ve been in contact with while potentially contagious. The worker then tells those contacts to quarantine and watch for symptoms.
A spokesman for the Florida Department of Health in Miami-Dade County sent a statement to CNN about finding contacts in his state.
“When the Health Department receives a notification that a person has tested positive for COVID-19, the department conducts an extensive epidemiological investigation in conjunction with the [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] to identify individuals who may have had close contact with the virus. These individuals are then notified by their county health department and instructed to self-isolate for 14 days after exposure to the virus, and to immediately contact their county health department and healthcare provider if they develop symptoms. This process is followed for all people who test positive in Florida, “Olga Connor wrote in the email.
Number of contact trackers in Florida unclear
It is unclear how many contact trackers are used by the state of Florida, as spokespersons for the Department of Health gave CNN two different numbers.
“More than 1,600 people, including students, epidemiologists, and other staff from across the Department, are currently involved in monitoring contacts for every positive case of COVID-19 in Florida,” wrote Candy Sims, a spokeswoman for the Florida Department of Health at Broward County. to CNN.
The department has hired a private company to hire 400 additional contact trackers, Sims added.
But Alberto Moscoso, a spokesman for the health department, quoted a larger number, writing to CNN that Florida has 2,300 “individuals involved in contact tracing.”
Sims and Moscoso did not respond to CNN’s questions about the differences in their numbers.
“Immediately notify those with whom you have had close contact while you were sick,” according to the chart, noting that those contacts should be quarantined for 14 days.
The Florida infographic does not explain what to do if someone tests positive for Covid-19 but has never shown symptoms. According to the CDC, in that case, people should be notified if they had close contact with the infected person two days before that person was tested for Covid.
5 of the 27 Floridians received follow-up contacts
Of the 27 Floridians who tested positive for Covid-19, five told CNN that they had received a call from a health official asking for their contacts.
Among the 27 cases, the earliest diagnosis was in February, and the most recent was last week.
The Riveras hired Covid in early March, when contact trackers were under considerably less pressure than they are now. Shaila Rivera said a Miami-Dade County Health Department official called and asked about her illnesses, but did not ask about her contacts.
“We were surprised,” said Rivera, a pediatric nurse. “The whole conversation lasted less than a minute. There were no questions like who did he have contact with? Did he go to work? None of that.”
Eleven other people out of the 27 said that, like the Riveras, they received calls from a Florida health official, but were not asked for their contacts.
David Pugh, who lives in Broward County, said he received that call.
“I don’t know if we can count on the state to do a complete job. I think there are obviously flaws in the system,” he said.
Doubts about the usefulness of contact tracing
Contact tracking has been done since the first case in the United States more than five months ago, and there are several reasons why the outbreak could not be contained.
“How do I trace contacts when someone doesn’t have any symptoms?” Fauci said in his interview with CNN. “The standard, classic paradigm of identification, isolation, contact tracing doesn’t work, no matter how good you are because you don’t know who you’re tracing.”
In addition, he said some people hesitate to speak to government officials.
“The dots are not connected because much of it is done over the phone,” Fauci said. “Fifty percent of people because you come from an authority, they don’t even want to talk to you.”
In addition to these problems, some experts doubt the usefulness of contact tracing in areas like Florida, where cases are on the rise.
Epidemiologist Michael Osterholm urged Florida leaders to focus on other strategies, such as finding out where the virus is spreading.
With thousands of new cases per day in Florida, Osterholm doubted that contact tracing would have a major effect.
“If Florida could recover 50 to 100 cases per day, contact tracing could be helpful. But right now, it’s not likely to have any measurable impact,” he said. “It’s like trying to put out a wildfire with a single fire truck. It just won’t make a dent.”
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