A contact tracking app. The | AP Photo / Stephen Groves
NEW YORK – Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration implemented its contact-seeking program with great fanfare, promising that it would help ensure the resurgence of New York City from the crushing of the coronavirus.
But things did not go as planned and after spending a week at the defensive town hall he is now trying to change the perception of a mediocre program cursed by a territorial war between the mayor and his health department.
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City officials this week began emphasizing different data points to present the program as a success, seeking outside support from doctors and doing radio interviews to shape the narrative.
“Among our cases that complete our interview, that is, those we have asked about, if they have contacts, 74 percent to date have shared contacts with us. In the last week alone, week three, 86 percent of our cases, people newly diagnosed with coronavirus who went through our interview gave us contacts, 86 percent, “said Ted Long, the doctor who oversees the program, during a press conference this week.
He attributed the number to smart hiring decisions: “More than half of our trackers are people from our hardest hit communities in New York City,” he said. “They understand our communities and our communities, therefore they trust them.”
What he did not say was that about half of those who recently tested positive for the contagious virus did not provide information to the city’s team of contact trackers. Of the 7,584 positive Covid-19 cases between June 1 and June 20, the trackers numbered 6,248, according to data the city makes public. Of that total, 3,797 completed an interview and only 2,808 were able to identify at least one person with whom they came into contact.
In other words, only half of the positive cases completed an interview.
But the city also subtracted from the total number of people it couldn’t reach by phone, 1,336, to conclude that 61 percent completed interviews.
“That’s a good start, but ultimately it should probably be above 70 percent. Where we have even more work to do is quarantine and isolation, “said Mark Levine, a member of the city council, who chairs the health committee, in an interview.
He noted that only 63 people “came to [a] hotel, “according to city data. But that does not indicate whether they stayed indoors for 14 days, the recommended time period to isolate after testing positive.
Several sources said city officials were urged to present positive information this week after negative press reports, including a front-page story in The New York Times over the weekend that described the show as a failure.
Long told POLITICO on Thursday that officials plan to shorten the contact trackers interview, which is now 45 minutes or more, to encourage more people to complete it. But he argued that getting contacts from 74 percent of those completing the interview is significant. “The deciding factor in the program in terms of how we set it up is whether New Yorkers trust us,” he said.
And Long said earlier this week that the city reached 97 percent of newly diagnosed people for whom they could find phone numbers, omitting from that total the number of people who tested positive and were not contacted.
“The fact that we have been able to reach 97 percent of newly diagnosed people with coronavirus for whom we have a phone number shows that the program is working,” Long said Monday.
