A CNN investigation suggests Florida health officials are failing to conduct contract tracing in COVID-19 cases. The CDC says contact tracing is key to slowing the spread of coronavirus.
In general, contact tracing involves identifying people who have an infectious disease case and people who they came in contact with and working with them to interrupt disease spread.
This includes asking people with COVID-19 to isolate and their contacts to quarantine at home voluntarily.
CNN spoke with 27 Floridians, or their family members, who’d tested positive for COVID-19. Of those, only five said they had received a call from health authorities asking for their contacts.
The National Association of County and City Health Officials estimate that during a pandemic, communities need 30 contact tracers for every 100,00 people.
CNN’s report finds if Florida were to adequately staffed to those guidelines, the state would need 6,443 employees working as contact tracers.
A report from Nephron Research released three days ago shows only 7 states had enough contract tracers to meet the agency’s guidelines
On Saturday, Florida set a record for most coronavirus cases in the US in a single day, with a total of 11,458, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University, and on Sunday, the state surpassed 200,000 COVID-19 cases.