Answer your damn phone.
That’s the message contact trackers are trying to get across to callers who have tested positive for the coronavirus that causes COVID-19. A public service announcement tweeted by the state Department of Health shows two iPhones side by side, one with an incoming call from “Your Ex” and the other from “New York State Contact Tracking,” with instructions from above “Do not collect” and above the other, “Please collect”.
About 100 percent of those in New York City who tested positive and shared an exact number at the time of admission have been picking up the phone. And it appears that people are getting used to sharing information from those to whom they might have exposed: of those who completed interviews, approximately three-quarters provided information to trackers for their secondary contacts.
But getting people to pick up the phone has been just one of several challenges facing city and state dating programs. Hiring and training people, making technology work, and getting different agencies to exchange information seamlessly has been difficult.
The leaders of both programs say they had to speed up their systems quickly and had to fix problems as they arose, but they are already making progress.
“We stood up in a matter of a few weeks, an organization with thousands of people, from scratch: the IT infrastructure, the management infrastructure, the training infrastructure,” said Dr. Ted Long, physician and administrator for Health and Hospitals. Corporation that runs the city’s Testing and Tracing Corps. “We didn’t want to waste a minute to get this going for New York City.”
But some experts say the city’s program, which started in early June, should have started much earlier. A veteran city epidemiologist blames the Health Department for failing to track contacts at the peak of the outbreak.
“Yes, the numbers were overwhelming, and yes, they would have only reached a fraction of the infected people, but that could have provided useful information that could have slowed down transmission,” the source said, withholding his name to speak. frankly about the debates within the Department of Health and the de Blasio administration.
“We should have gone much further with this many, many weeks ago,” said Dr. Irwin Redlener, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University. “As with testing, we were not prepared, and we are not yet ready to do any of those tasks enough, to make sure that people are tested and to have a robust and effective contact tracking system.”
Many public health observers, including the chairmen of the health committees of the state Assembly and the Senate, have criticized Mayor de Blasio for handing over evidence and follow-up efforts to the city’s public health system of the Department of Health, It works closely with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and is well regarded internationally for its ability to contain outbreaks. Dr. Denis Nash, who has worked for both agencies and is now a professor of epidemiology at the CUNY Graduate School of Public Health, said there has been a “disconnect between what we hear and what I think are the bigger goals. health program of the contact monitoring program “.
Nash said the city program, in its remarks, emphasizes how many people have been reached, how many secondary contacts the trackers have spoken with and other figures, but is not talking about patterns that can help inform both policy makers. of decisions like the average citizens.
We are helping all New Yorkers who test positive for COVID-19 to stay safe and healthy. If your result is positive, Test and Trace Corps will call you: pick up the phone!
They will get you a hotel room if you need it, and anything else you need. pic.twitter.com/u5AGK0ZcGP
– New York Mayor’s Office (@NYCMayorsOffice) June 5, 2020
“What goes hand in hand with contact tracing is getting epidemic intelligence,” he said. Who is getting COVID now? And if contact tracing hits every new diagnosis, shouldn’t we be learning something about its likely mode of acquisition? And shouldn’t we tell everyone about it every few days, so that we can all do our part in trying to close the gaps in prevention?
A newly hired contact tracker cited problems with training and management.
“There is a lot of conflicting information,” said a woman who identified herself as Dee to Dr. Long at the Brian Lehrer show on Thursday. “There is our agency [Health and Hospitals]But then there is the contractor, and we have many different supervisors … and our training schedules are even a little short and difficult to understand. “
Long replied that he was eager to know more about her.
“We are fully committed to that,” he said. “I think there is evidence of how things have improved, through their hard work, between the first two weeks and last week, it has already been very, very encouraging.”
Outside of New York City, individual counties run their own contact tracking programs, coordinated by the state Department of Health. Several counties have complained about Albany’s “tough” orientation, according to a veteran observer, and are criticizing a contact-tracking program the state acquired, called CommCare. Some have said they refuse to use it and threatened to go their own way.
“Local health departments have been responsible for following up on contacts for decades and are very good at what they do,” said Sarah Ravenhall, executive director of the New York County Association of Health Officials. “Therefore, it is natural that some local health departments want to use a system that they consider most suitable for locating contacts in their communities.”
Ravenhall said counties share the same goals with the state to ensure “that work is done consistently and that data is generally standardized.”
Larry Schwartz, Governor Andrew Cuomo’s key person in tracking contacts, said he has not heard complaints and that any software or other problems are simply part of creating a new state program so quickly.
“I think we are moving at the speed of light,” said Schwartz. “Like any new program, like any new technology, there are always a couple of technical issues and problems … many of them have been resolved, and the remaining few are being tested with beta solutions.”
Schwartz said counties will need to line up or risk losing money to help pay for their expanded contact search obligations.
“To be eligible for federal funds, the federal government requires a unified surveillance system to be able to monitor and track the success of the program,” Schwartz said, recounting a recent conference call with county leaders. “I had zero complaints and zero people who told me they weren’t going to participate.”
