The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
State launches virus contact tracing system
Three local health departments have begun tracking the spread of the coronavirus
Three local health departments in Connecticut have begun contact tracing efforts for coronavirus cases through the state’s system, and more than 300 people have been trained in the process so far.
“The system’s live,” Josh Geballe, the governor’s chief operating officer, said Friday. The first three departments “were onboarded and trained earlier this week, and we’ve got actual, live data, live cases now working through that process.”
Under the ContaCT system, created by Microsoft for the state, health department staffs and volunteers around the state collect names and locations of recent contacts from people who test positive for the coronavirus, then reach out to people who may have been exposed. That will be done primarily through texting and email “to automate as much as possible,” with phone calls used for following up if necessary.
More local departments will be brought onto the system “every day for the next week,” Geballe said.
Gov. Ned Lamont said at a news briefing Thursday that more than 300 volunteers have been trained to work with health departments on the effort. The state is aiming to have 400 to 500 student volunteers, alongside more than 300 employees.
State health officials said earlier this month that the system would be in full
operation by May 18, ahead of the scheduled May 20 launch of the state’s phase one of reopening. Kristen Soto, an epidemiologist at the state Department of Public Health, said previously that 20 departments would be participating in a soft rollout as part of a pilot program.
The governor’s office and DPH didn’t respond Friday to questions about the system.
Health departments in some cities, including New Haven and Norwalk, have already started their own contact tracing efforts, which initially operated separately from the state’s system.
“We’re looking to integrate with the state system as well,” said Brian Weeks, the city of New Haven Health Department’s epidemiologist. The city launched its own system using technology from Veoci, a local company that the city uses for emergency management operations, and with support and volunteers from Yale University. Before that can be integrated with the state’s system, they need to understand and test out the ContaCT program, Weeks said.
He said the city was “fortunate” to have a local company they could work with to get the process going earlier, while the state worked to find a platform for their own system. New Haven consulted with the Department of Public Health in developing questionnaires and processes, Weeks said, as well as drawing on past experience using contact tracing for other illnesses, like measles. Currently, about 40 school nurses have been deployed in various ways to work on contact tracing, alongside about 90 volunteer students from Yale’s Schools of Medicine, Nursing and Public Health. Another 50 to 60 volunteers are “ready to be called in” if cases surge, Weeks said.
Bringing all of the contact tracing under one system will help provide unity and standardization across health departments, which have been handling tracing cases separately since the start of the pandemic, Weeks said.
Questions about the state’s contact tracing capacity have already been raised as the metric is a key part of the plan to reopen shuttered businesses next week. Lamont and his administration have touted the program, which he said Thursday is capable of handling up to 3,000 new positive cases each day. But in a letter this week, eleven Senate Democrats asked him for more information about the meaning of “sufficient” tracing, and about when contact tracing methods would be “available and accessible to everyone.”
The staff and volunteers who are working on the system won’t need to contact everyone who was in the same store or restaurant as the infected person, a concern as businesses begin opening next week for limited shopping and outdoor dining.
“What’s important to understand is that not all contacts are high-risk contacts, and we use a rule of within 6 feet, face-to-face, within 10 to 15 minutes,” said Dr. Albert Ko, cochair of the Reopen Connecticut Advisory Group. “So if you can imagine yourself going to a restaurant, you’re not having high-risk contacts with everybody in the restaurant, especially when we’re having social distancing. So I think that’s something important to understand about contact tracing and the nature of contacts and how they cause transmission.”
The state’s guidelines for reopening require businesses, including offices and restaurants, to “maintain a log of employees on premise over time, to support contact tracing,” to identify close contacts if necessary.
“When someone tests positive and they go into the contact tracing system, regardless of where they’ve been, whether they’ve been in a business, whether they haven’t, they’re interviewed,” Geballe said. “If they opt in and they’re willing to participate, which we expect based on experience most people will, that most people want to help, that most people want to protect their friends and their family and help protect their health, we’ll follow those leads wherever they will be.”
“We are optimistic,” he said. “I think the people of Connecticut have shown that they want to play an active role in doing the right thing to help reduce the spread of COVID, and participating in the contact tracing efforts are a very important part of that.”
“The system’s live.” The first three departments “were onboarded and trained earlier this week, and we’ve got actual, live data, live cases now working through that process.”
Josh Geballe