South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
Broward touts its 340 contact tracers
Protesters storm onto the beach in Fort Lauderdale on Saturday.
Broward County Mayor Dale Holness said Tuesday that the county has just brought on board an additional 150 people to trace contacts of people who have coronavirus — almost doubling the number of people available to help combat the spread of the virus.
With the 150 people he said were “onboarded” Monday by the Broward County unit of the state Department of Public Health, Holness said there is a workforce of 340 involved in the effort.
But the number of contact tracers falls far short of the 1,580 needed in Broward County, according to a model developed by the Mullan Institute at the George Washington University. The contact tracer estimator, funded by a grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, uses 14-day case counts to calculate the number of contact tracers needed to clear all cases within a week.
The number of contact tracers needed increases as the number of caseloads increase — which has been happening for most of June, with much higher growth in the last 10 days of the month.
Holness said the 150 new contact tracers are being paid for with a portion of the $340.7 million allocated to Broward County through the federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, also known as the CARES Act.
He said Dr. Paula Thaqi, director of the Florida Department of Health unit in Broward County, already had 150 contact tracers, plus another 40 supplied by the state. “She believes that’s adequate for the time being,” Holness said in an interview with the South Florida Sun Sentinel Editorial Board.
Holness said he wasn’t familiar with the George Washington University projection that the county
needs many more, but said, “If we need to do more, we’ll do more.”
Melissa Ward-Peterson, an epidemiologist who works on the impact of societal factors in public health at Florida International University, where she’s a post-doctoral associate, said the additional contact tracers are good — but many more are needed.
“It’s absolutely great. We need more,” she said. “We can’t give up on contact tracing. We have to keep doing that work. The county, the state, just everybody needs to be scaling up contact tracing.”
As the number of cases go up, more contact tracers are needed, she said. More contact tracers earlier in the pandemic would have helped keep down the number of cases, she said.
When a case comes back as positive, a contact tracer gets in touch with the person to do just what the name suggests: figure out who they’ve been in contact with. Those people can then be contacted and isolated so they don’t expose other people.
“It takes a lot of work. It takes a lot of man hours. But that is basically how to contain the spread of an infectious disease,” she said.
Holness said he’s been told that most people are cooperating with contacttracing efforts, though some aren’t and hang up the phone. “That’s how life is. You’re not going to get 100% of everyone to do what is right.”
He said it’s one part of the strategy to contain the spread of the coronavirus. “We know that identifying folks who have the virus and getting them to contain themselves, quarantine themselves is an effective way to deal with it,” Holness said. “Wearing facial coverings is another very effective way. Avoiding crowds is another very effective way. Washing hands, sanitizing your hands, not touching your eyes and nose, we have to practice that.”
Mask mandate
Broward County requires people to wear masks in public places where social distancing isn’t possible.
The mayor said he’d like to see Gov. Ron DeSantis issue a statewide order requiring masks — something the governor has repeatedly said isn’t necessary and he won’t do.
“I got to tell you I disagree with that straight up,” he said. “Here’s the deal. We are here in South Florida, but our people go to Orlando also, and they go elsewhere within the state. And we’re seeing more now in terms of travel, tourism, people driving from one part of the state to the other to have some vacation time, which I think we’ll see more of as we go forward.”
Holness is about twothirds into his term as mayor, leading an all-Democratic County Commission in the most Democratic county in the state. He said he has no interest in criticizing the Republican governor.
“By and large I think he’s done OK,” Holness said. “We can’t politicize this thing. It’s not about politics. It’s about peoples’ lives and livelihoods.”
“I’m not going to pick any fights with the governor. Because when I need resources for the people of Broward County, I need it. And I can tell you that others can pick the fight. I’m not going to, not here or anywhere else. I can tell you that when we reach out to his office, they’ve been responsive to us,” Holness said. “In terms of his overall strategy, what he does all over the state, I’m not going to sit here and debate that with you.”