Tracing 1, 2, 3

At a time when millions of New Yorkers have just lost their jobs, 1,700 people are freshly employed, and bless them: Today, an army of contact tracers goes to work at 9 a.m., ready to spot coronavirus cases wherever they may crop up.

Hey, New Yorkers, to stop a resurgence of this virus, we’ve all got to participate. So when your phone rings and shows “NYC Test and Trace” calling, or you hear a knock at the door, answer. Give them the information they request.

Normally, the Health Department has 100 tracers. In this pandemic, guidelines mandate a minimum of at least 2,500 and the city is on course to reach that by next week’s first reopening ease, with plans for 5,000 to 10,000 tracers working 7 days a week to fully get the task done.

Every person who gets a positive test result back starting today will be interviewed and then every person in recent contact with that individual. Anyone needing help with medical care or isolating or quarantining will get it. For free.

In theory, every positive case will be fully traced and all persons in the chain given whatever help is required, including hotel rooms. It’s a massive undertaking and it seems well-organized before today’s kickoff, a reassuring sign after the embarrassing interagency squabbling and backstabbing played out in the press between the Health Department and the city’s public hospitals corporation when Mayor de Blasio assigned the hospitals to run the enterprise.

What’s done is done. Make this work.