Get and Keep America Open

Contact Tracing Jobs
Building an "Army of Disease Detectives"
U.S. Needs 100,000 to 300,000 Contact Tracers

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100,000 to 300,000 Disease Detectives Needed in U.S. Alone


Just a Thought - Just a Job? No - You Can Help Save Lives in the Process
Contact Tracing Disease Detectives Earning $40,000 to $70,000
Not bad for a temporary job for displaced retail Loss Prevention professionals in need of employment in this market. Might be worth mentioning to any colleague or unemployed LP associates you may know or have worked with. After all it is somewhat of an investigative process that requires great interpersonal interviewing skills. And it may just save some lives in the process.

You don't have to look at it as permanent. But you never know how it unfolds and wherever you have such large group of people, managers and an organizational pyramid is there as well. Just a thought. -Gus Downing

Calif's "Army of Disease Detectives"
California Rushes to Build an Army of Coronavirus Detectives
State health officials have launched an unprecedented effort to train thousands of front-line, county-level workers to act as a firewall to stop the coronavirus from roaring back this fall.

Gov. Gavin Newsom calls them his “army of disease detectives.”

When someone tests positive for COVID-19, the tracing team will interview that person, find out who they have been in close contact with, then quickly call each of those people to tell them they have been exposed to the virus and to instruct them to take a coronavirus test. If tests come out positive, individuals will be asked to stay home for two weeks, and the whole cycle begins again. Some counties, though, will simply instruct the person to self-quarantine without taking the test.

Each tracer is receiving 20 hours of online training. Newsom said the state already had more than 2,800 tracers on hand and another 500 had been trained in recent weeks, ready to be deployed.

The state health department announced that each county should have 15 contact tracers per 100,000 residents before it reopens restaurants and stores for interior patronage.

San Diego County is advertising now for temporary contact tracers, offering $19.50 an hour (the equivalent of $40,000 a year full time). Other counties have issued help wanted ads. In Shasta County, a disease specialist at the top end of scale can make up to $70,000. In Sacramento County, a senior communicable disease investigator can make $66,000. govtech.com

So You Want to Be a Contact Tracer?

Contrace Public Health Corps Helping Health Dept.'s Across the U.S.

Tens of thousands of people across the United States have applied for the job of cold-calling strangers who may have been exposed to Covid-19. Here’s what it’s like.

More than 11,000 people across the United States who are calling people with advice about containing the spread of Covid-19, according to a survey conducted by NPR. (That number has most likely grown since the survey was first conducted in April.)

Estimates for the number of people needed nationwide for contact tracing range from 100,000 to as high as 300,000.

The work is mostly phone-based and can be done from home. The jobs can be full- or part-time, often with an hourly wage of $17 to $25; some include benefits. They differ from one place to the next in part because training and recruiting efforts have largely fallen to state and local governments (and some of the programs have already run into problems, both practical and political).

As communities begin to open up and more people venture outside their homes, the job is expected to become more crucial — and more difficult.

“If you can do contact tracing, you can get ahold of this before it runs through a community like wildfire,” Ms. Jaramillo said. “Then you’re saving someone’s grandmother, or their uncle.”

Taking an ‘old school’ approach

Phone conversations unfold according to the needs of the people on the other end of the line. If they need testing for Covid-19, you can refer them for an appointment. If they have symptoms, you might recommend isolation. If they worry about survival in quarantine, you can connect them with food-delivery services.

And if they worry about privacy, assure them that their information is secure. Training involves a primer on the federal regulations protecting confidential health information, and you work with encrypted software.

The University of California, San Francisco, has been working with both the city and the state to train hundreds of workers.

“Contact tracing is not a silver bullet,” said Dr. Mike Reid, an assistant professor at the U.C.S.F. School of Medicine.

But he said the “old school” approach of San Francisco and other health departments — which is based on education and empowerment, not tracking apps like the ones Google and Apple are working on — can bring communities together and build capacity to handle future crises.

It’s a competitive job market

And the opportunities vary from state to state; Massachusetts and California were among the earliest to adopt widespread Covid-19 tracing programs. With the state's Health Departments managing the process.

Ohio's Department of Health announced last week that it was hiring at $18.59 per hour. By Tuesday, the job posting on the Health Department’s website had been removed. Over 9,000 people applied to do contact-tracing work with the state, according to the department.

And although Ohio officials have called for 1,700 contact tracers, those were to be deployed largely by local health departments.

Contact tracers don’t work alone. The process starts with investigators who reach out to people with Covid-19, and those conversations yield contacts for tracers.

After those calls are made, there is follow-up work to be done to help people find resources like food pantries and financial assistance.

What makes a good candidate?

Partners in Health, which has helped Massachusetts officials recruit and train more than 1,700 people. That’s only a fraction of the more than 41,000 who have applied through the organization.

“But what’s really important in the middle of an epidemic is empathy.”

Contrace Public Health Corps, an organization helping health departments across the United States recruit tracers, received more than 50,000 applications in recent weeks, mostly from women, said Steve Waters, the chief executive.

While a college diploma is not always required, Mr. Waters said the best candidates have a bachelor’s degree and some background in health care services.

Diversity is important, too.

“Cultural literacy is key to developing trust with someone you are cold-calling, particularly in minority or distressed communities, which are some of the worst hit,” Mr. Waters said.

Nationally, the coronavirus is infecting and killing black people at disproportionately high rates, reflecting longstanding inequalities in resources and access to care. The virus has also brought deadly disease clusters and economic crises to Native American reservations across the United States.

“This is an opportunity to go on offense, track down exposures to this virus and limit the spread,” he said. “It requires heart.”

“Every single day is different. I’m hearing many, many individual stories that are depressing, inspiring and uplifting all at the same time.” nytimes.com

Editor's Note: Start at your states Health Department and your local Health Department. Bottom line is that this is an investigators job that requires getting people to tell you things they really don't want to. And isn't that what the industry is good at? Hey give them a call.


Educate Yourself Before Applying
CDC COVID-19 Contact Tracing - Program - Training - Resources

Get and Keep America Open: Supporting states, tribes, localities, and territories

Revisions were made on May 22, 2020, to reflect the following:

New guidance resource available (see “Guidance” section below): Key Information to Collect During a Case Interview

Revisions were made on May 15, 2020, to reflect the following:

New guidance document available (see “Guidance” section below): Health Departments: Interim guidance on developing a COVID-19 case investigation & contact tracing plan

CDC guidance for COVID-19 may be adapted by state and local health departments to respond to rapidly changing local circumstances

Training

• COVID-19 Contact Tracing Training: Guidance, Resources, and Training Plan

Visit www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov


Visit Your State's Health Department

NYC Hires 1,700 Tracers - Expects 2,500

New Mexico Department of Health and the State Personnel Office began accepting applications Friday to fill 200 to 250 contact-tracing jobs

Contact tracing underway in Lancaster County, PA., 150 temporary jobs available

Chicago to hire 600 contact tracers - Just started recruiting yesterday