The new report is titled “A National Plan to Enable Comprehensive COVID-19 Case Finding and Contact Tracing in the U.S.” and it considers the issues surrounding case finding and contact tracing in the U.S., in order to help policy makers to plan for the variation in COVID-19 cases.
This takes the form of local, state, and territorial case investigation and management.
Contact tracing
According to the World Health Organization (WHO) contact tracing is an epidemiological approach, which consists of:
Contact identification
Once someone is confirmed as infected with a virus, contacts are identified by asking about the person’s contacts over the past few days. This also includes their activities and places they have visited.
Contact listing
All persons considered to have contact with the infected person should be listed as contacts. For the process to work, every contact should be traced and information given about the potential contact with an infected person.
Contact follow-up
Regular follow-up should be conducted with all contacts to monitor for symptoms and test for signs of COVID-19.
Key points from the new report
With the report from John Hopkins University, the main points are:
The importance of the U.S. implementing a robust and comprehensive system to identify all COVID-19 cases and trace all close contacts of each identified case.
This system is necessary in order to save lives, reduce COVID-19’s burden on our healthcare system, ease strict social distancing measures, and confidently make progress towards returning to work and school.
To achieve these “musts” – including tracing all contacts, safely isolating the sick, and quarantining those exposed – the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and ASTHO estimate that the American public health workforce will need approximately 100,000 (paid or volunteer) contact tracers to assist with this large-scale effort.
This workforce could be strategically deployed to areas of greatest need and managed through state and local public health agencies that are on the front lines of COVID-19 response.
To do this, it is estimated that Congress will need to appropriate approximately $3.6 billion in emergency funding to state and territorial health departments.
Through this process, policy makers can identify persons who may have come into contact with an infected person (“contacts”). This enables the subsequent collection of further information about thesepotential contacts.
