Texas aims to ramp up its contact tracing plan
IS IT ENOUGH?: Experts warn more may be needed
As Texas prepares to further loosen emergency restrictions next week, officials say they now have about half of the contact tracers they need to help spot and contain new outbreaks of COVID-19.
A spokesman for Republican Gov. Greg Abbott said Wednesday that more than 2,000 tracers have been deployed, and that the state is “already in the process of ramping up even further to meet the governor’s goal of 4,000.”
That’s up from 1,100 tracers late last month, when Abbott began reopening businesses and allowing nonessential workers to leave their homes amid the pandemic. He plans to have 4,000 tracers in place by the end of May.
A national group of health experts has suggested Texas will need nearly twice as
many tracers. So far, many cities and counties with the biggest need have had to turn to college students and volunteers while they train and hire more.
Contact tracers act as health detectives, tracking down people who have been exposed to a virus and convincing them to isolate. Health experts consider them to be critical in preventing a second wave of the outbreak until a vaccine is developed, which could be in 2021.
In the Houston region, city and Harris County officials plan to add 600 tracers, while the Metropolitan Health District in San Antonio has nearly 90 employees and volunteers in place and has said it can double its force if cases begin to rise.
Nationally, a bipartisan group of former government health officials has recommended far more tracers in Texas than called for in Abbott’s plan. Health experts at George Washington University and the National Association of County and City Health Officials, have recommended about 7,700 tracers in Texas, at its current level of cases.
George Roberts, who heads both the health officials association and the Northeast Texas Public Health District in Tyler, said that estimate may be too high for counties that don’t have large outbreaks.
“It’s really going to relate to what are the case volumes in the area that you’re looking at,” he said.
Employees from other local departments have been helping Roberts’ district with contact tracing, and he said they plan to hire a few tracers going forward with money from the federal coronavirus relief package known as the CARES Act.
Building teams
The state has also set up an online tracing application where people can submit their symptoms. It has received about 8,000 submissions.
Abbott has not talked much publicly about contact tracing, focusing more recently on “surge teams” sent to regional hot spots. Last week, he deployed a team of 70 military personnel and two emergency medical experts to the Panhandle, which has been hard hit by outbreaks at meatpacking plants.
John Wittman, the governor’s spokesman, said similar teams have been dispatched to 85 locations since the outbreak began.
Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo said Wednesday that the county is still waiting on testing resources from the state but in the meantime plans to build its team of about 300 tracers by the end of May and later add about 100 more.
Dr. Umair Shah, executive director of Harris County Public Health, said communities are contact tracing in three different ways: either by letting the state handle the program, combining state and local efforts or doing the work themselves and then sending the state their results.
The county is still working on how it will proceed, he said.
The county’s tracing plan is designed to be sustainable without the state’s help — as long the rate of new cases in Harris County remains under 180 a day. The reopening of various businesses could jeopardize that if Texans become lax in protecting themselves, Hidalgo said: “The reopening may give folks a false sense of safety.”
Most of the tracers have been hired, and the cost of that will likely be reimbursed through the CARES Act, Shah said. Volunteers make up the ranks of tracers, and most are students. The tracers will work out of the county health building and at least two other satellite offices.
The county’s tracing program is separate from the Houston Health Department’s efforts.
‘Something I can do’
Universities have played a key role in helping expand tracing efforts. In Tarrant County, students at the University of North Texas Health Science Center at Fort Worth have been helping interview infected people.
Emily Hardlin Ladtkow, who just graduated with a masters degree in public health, said she is working about 20 hours a week for the county, earning $13 an hour, which is paid through the school. She plans to continue with it while she looks for fulltime work.
The University of Houston College of Medicine plans to supply a number of faculty and students to the county through a free online training program unveiled earlier this week. Dr. Bettina Beech, who helped launch the training, said she had more than 500 people reach out about enrolling as of Tuesday.
Beech said tracing seems straightforward but is labor intensive.
“You have to know how to build trust,” she said. “You have to know what information you can provide and when you need to get a supervisor. You need to understand enough about COVID-19 to know who is a high risk contact and who is not.”
Zainab Diwan, a 24-year-old graduate student and the first to sign up for the course, said she hopes to get hired by the county.
“As a student, I’m not exactly an essential worker,” she said. “This is something I can do and take action.”