The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Growing pains snag CT tracking
Health officials cite need to adjust contact tracing program
The state contact tracing system’s inability to send information in languages aside from English is one of several problems local health departments are working through.
Officials from Bridgeport, Danbury,
New Haven and Norwalk all listed the language limitations of the statewide ContaCT system, which launched in June, as chief among their concerns in the early weeks of implementation. That, and other bugs, have popped up as local health departments throughout the state come online.
“Just like with any other roll out, there needs to be a process of trial and error,” said Maritza Bond, New Haven’s director of public health. According to Bond, the same was true of the city’s original tracing software, developed in partnership with New Haven-based tech company Veoci.
“Even when we had this system internally with Veoci, we enhanced it pretty much every week, modified the script, fixed different issues,” Bond said. New Haven began using the system June 22.
ContaCT is meant to aid in the contact tracing process, which involves the identification of people with the disease and the
notification of all those with whom they may have made contact. The platform automates aspects of the contact tracing process, beginning with calls made by a team of volunteers to infected individuals. Those contacted can then opt into the platform and elect to receive calls, text messages or emails with information on how to properly quarantine and keep others safe.
As of June 22, the CT Mirror reported 51 of 65 local and municipal health departments had come on board (the state Department of Health did not respond to multiple requests for comment and for updated figures).
Heading into July 4 weekend, Connecticut found itself in an enviable position. After months of battling the pandemic, Connecticut is one of a handful of states that apparently has mostly stymied the spread of the coronavirus.
“Connecticut is one of four states on track to contain the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a study by Covid Act Now,” Lt. Gov. Susan Bysiewicz said Wednesday, at the governor’s news conference from Hammonassett Beach State Park in Madison. “Connecticut went from a state with one of the highest infection
rates to one of the lowest. And this was accomplished by implementing policies based on science, data and facts, not politics.”
Among those policies were stringent social distancing measures, including the closure of businesses, a recommendation to wear masks in public and an emphasis on hygiene and hand-washing. Those strategies helped to manage the spread of the virus. But the continued control of transmission will likely hinge on the state’s ability to contact trace and
communicate with its residents.
“We started using ContaCT this month and are still getting acclimated to the system,” Norwalk Director of Health Deanna D’Amore said Tuesday. “We are working closely with the state to align our work, make improvements, and make sure we have a system in Norwalk that enables us to quickly test, trace, and isolate to stop the spread of COVID-19. We have also advocated the state to ensure Spanish, Haitian Creole, and other
languages are included in ContaCT to reflect the diversity of our city and state.”
Danbury Acting Director of Health Kara Prunty said the platform had mostly been working well for the city since replacing its original system. It’s made daily monitoring of cases more efficient and, according to Prunty, the state had been responsive to questions during implementation.
But Danbury and other local departments have had to come up with their own solutions to the language barrier. Several health directors said they relied on multilingual volunteers to verbally communicate the state system’s messages.
“We make it a priority to provide information in multiple languages to support our large Hispanic and Portuguese communities,” Prunty said. “As of now, both contact alert systems we have used are limited to English automation. Danbury contact tracers conduct initial interviews in multiple languages. The State of Connecticut has been alerted to this issue and is currently working on a solution.”
Inability to reach Spanish, Haitian, and other non-English speaking residents, is not the only issue that has emerged.
Because buy-in from residents is crucial to the success of contact tracing — and because many residence are skeptical about their information being shared — city officials in Bridgeport advocated for more awareness of the tracing campaign, to better inform the public on its importance, how its conducted and its potential benefits to public health. The state has repeatedly guaranteed that information collected would be used solely to help stop the spread of the virus.
And Bond, in New Haven, said as the city gets acclimated to the state’s system she hopes to transition into more of a quality assurance role, facilitating the state’s work, ensuring that there is timely followup on confirmed cases and expressing issues when they arise. On July 7, she and other New Haven officials will meet with the state to further discuss the system.
“We are working through some of the concerns,” Bond said. “We meet weekly as health directors in the state and then we have a focus group meeting between the city and the Department of Public Health to give feedback.”
Chief among those initial concerns for Bond was the neglect of an tracing system that included 170 volunteers — as well as 15 public health nurses, the director of nursing and the city’s epidemiologist — and had proven highly effective. Other cities, like Danbury and Norwalk, also referenced earlier contact tracing programs that had been developed independent of the state and were now supplanted by the state program.
“We had a very robust program,” Bond said. “As you can imagine, it was very hard to let it go. But it’s important to be a team player and endorse this statewide system.”