STATE: CONTACT TRACING ON THE RIGHT TRACK
Virginia health officials say they are reaching 86% of new coronavirus cases within 24 hours
Virginia health officials are seeing promising signs the state’s ambitious contact tracing program is working, citing data that shows staffers are reaching roughly four out of five new coronavirus cases within 24 hours.
Though there are still uncertainties — it’s unclear how many people are sharing info on their contacts — experts said reaching 86% of people within a day shows the state health department is effectively scaling up its containment strategies.
The state now employs some 1,200 case investigators and contact tracers, a mix of reassigned staff, new hires and volunteers pulled up from the Medical Reserve Corps. They’re tasked with identifying and contacting anyone who has come in contact with the hundreds of people who are testing positive for COVID-19 each day throughout Virginia and urging them to self-isolate.
The work has been touted by officials and experts as a critical part of the state’s reopening plan. Virginia entered Phase 3 last week, allowing for gatherings of up to 250 people and removing caps on how many people may enter nonessential retail businesses and restaurants.
Other states and cities have struggled when ramping up their contact tracing efforts. In Louisiana, tracers reached fewer than half of the infected people they called. Massachusetts’ tracers were reaching about 60% of people in May.
“You’re not able to box in the virus with (those percentages),” said Anna Jeng, a professor at the School of Community and Environmental Health at Old Dominion University.
But Virginia appears to have avoided those pitfalls. The state
has been unable to reach just 16% of people to date.
Nearly 6,000 are under public health monitoring.
“I think we’ve consistently been doing a really good job in the face of this pandemic,” said Marshall Vogt, a senior epidemiologist who is leading this effort.
State health officials hope to eventually reach 90% of infected people within 24 hours.
They plan to update the state’s contact tracing data each Friday, although the stats don’t currently include all information from the Arlington and Fairfax Health Districts — which include some 1.3 million people.
Jeng, who serves on Virginia’s Board of Health, said anything more than 80% of people answering calls within a day of a positive diagnosis showed the program was on the right track. She stressed the state can only to so much, though, and that success or failure ultimately falls on the people who are testing positive. If they follow the recommendations to quarantine and minimize contacts with others, fewer people should get sick, she said.
Some of the people who are reached could also be uncooperative with the case investigators seeking information on their contacts. Despite requests from The Virginian-Pilot, Virginia officials have not provided figures on what percentage of people are providing information on their contacts after testing positive.
This has been an issue in other cities and states, with some patients stonewalling officials. In New York City, only between 35% and 42% of people who tested positive have been providing information to tracers about their close contacts.
Dr. Demetria Lindsay, the district health director in Norfolk, said the large majority of people are responsive to their requests for information.
Part of the issue is with the state’s data management system. Officials realized early on in the pandemic — during the state’s initial outbreak in James City County in March — that they did not have an adequate method of collecting contact tracing data for an event of this scale, said Lilian Peake, the state epidemiologist.
They didn’t have a new system in place until the end of May, due in part to a lack of funding. Virginia started using Sara Alert around May 29, though some of the state’s biggest counties, such as Fairfax and Arlington, are still getting onboard. That is why those contacts from those localities aren’t included in the current data.
It’s also unclear if contact tracers are seeing the same responsiveness in all areas of the state. Peake said the current data management system makes it difficult to break out by region, though the department is providing that information to health districts and could do so publicly if there is enough interest.
As a whole, the state has made significant strides in slowing the spread of the virus, with cases, hospitalizations and deaths down significantly from statewide peaks. Though the trend isn’t equal throughout Virginia, as cases have recently started to rise in Hampton Roads.
Peake said that it was “more challenging” to contact every case quickly when the state was seeing more than 1,200 cases a day, but did not say what percentage of people were being reached. Experts stressed that the state can’t contact trace its way out of this pandemic and that people need to follow social distancing practices.
“Once cases get to a certain degree, it’s hard to do contact tracing,” Jeng said.