MEMPHIS, Tenn. — The Shelby County Health Department is working to expand how they do contact tracing.
That’s the process of tracking who someone infected with a disease — in this case COVID-19 — has had contact with. Experts say expanded contact tracing is necessary if we’re going to continue to relax restrictions.
“Testing and contact tracing are the two core elements that we need to do,” said Dr. Manoj Jain, infectious disease specialist.
Health departments already conduct contact tracing, tracking sexually transmitted diseases and tuberculosis, but they’re now tasked with tracing the coronavirus.
Here’s how it works: The health department talks to an infected person. They then find out who that person recently had contact with, then reach out to those people. Those people are then told to quarantine and are monitored.
“Now we go to a surgical approach to containing those individuals who have the virus or were in contact with someone who has the virus,” as opposed to the broader approach we’ve had until now, Jain said.
Jain, an advisor to Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland, says more COVID-19 contact tracing needs to happen.
“We need 30,000 individuals at the national level to be doing contact tracing. We have about 1,, so that ramp-up is essential if we are to maintain the numbers to stay as low as they are,” he said.
Shelby County Health Department Director Dr. Alisa Haushalter agrees that more resources are needed.
Before the pandemic, health departments across the country had taken budget blows, she said, but millions of federal relief dollars are coming to the Mid-South through the CARES Act.
She worked with the Memphis and Shelby County mayors to submit a proposal on what she believes we need within public health to continue to do contact tracing for COVID-19.
The health department director says she does expect to bring on more staff for this. Dr. Jain also says until we have a treatment or vaccine this is key strategy.