May 6, 2020 • 7 mins
States around the country are beginning to get their army of coronavirus detectives ready to work. In California specifically, the state has teamed up with two universities to train more than 3,000 employees per week to become contact tracers. A robust system of contact tracing will be crucial for states to manage the spread of the virus as they reopen and one estimate says that the country needs 30 contact tracers for every 100,000 people. Rachel Becker, reporter at CAL Matters, joins us for more.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's Wednesday, May six. I'm Oscar Ramiraz from the Daily
Dive podcast in Los Angeles, and this is your daily
coronavirus update. States around the country are beginning to get
their army of coronavirus detectives ready to work. In California, specifically,
the state has teamed up with two universities to train
more than three thousand employees per week to become contact tracers.
(00:22):
A robust system of contact tracing will be crucial for
states to manage the spread of the virus as they reopened,
and one estimate says that the country needs thirty contact
tracers for every one thousand people. Rachel Becker, reporter at
cal Matters, joins us for more. Thanks for joining us, Rachel,
thanks for having me. I wanted to talk about the
army of coronavirus detectives needed to reopen states. We're gonna
(00:46):
talk about California specifically, but really this is something that's
going to be happening across the country. States need to
get a robust system of contact tracing in order to
help limit the spread of coronavirus once things start getting
back open and once the economy start moving again. So
Rachel tell us a little bit about the plan that
California is going through because they're using the University of California,
(01:08):
Los Angeles and the University of California, San Francisco to
help train a bunch of workers. Tell us about it. So,
California has been doing contact tracing already at the local level.
So the sixty one city and county public health departments
have been conducting contact tracing for forever. It's a it's
a cornerstone of public health for tuberculosis, for s t
(01:31):
I s sexually transmitted infections, and for the novel coronavirus.
But as the coronavirus keeps spreading, it's really taxed their
existing staff. Some have managed to lean on county employees
to help with contact tracing, but yesterday Governor Gavin Newsom
announced that California will be kind of stepping up to
(01:53):
help as well with what he called a training academy
from the University of California, Los Angeles in the University
of California, San Francisco, and this trading academy will provide
twelve hours of online instruction eight hours of in person
instruction to redeployed state employees in large part to help
with contact tracing, and the local health departments in the
(02:16):
state can request help and then they'll be assigned contact
tracers that are part of this new workforce. Now, I
wanted to talk about the number of contact traces that
we would need. The National Association of County and City
Health Officials estimated that the country will need thirty contact
traces for every one thousand Americans, So in California, that's
(02:38):
about twelve thousand that they'll need. And you mentioned just
right now that the governor plans on redeploying state employees.
That's a lot of state employees to shift around. Is
this going to be a potential for new jobs as well,
Like will people be able to apply for these things
or does it just seem right now like it's going
to be state employees only. Yesterday Governor Newsom's said that
(03:00):
they were going to be recruiting from state employees with
kind of the right set of skills, including kind of
what you call the health mindset, language skills, cultural competency.
But whether that will be enough, how exactly they're being recruited,
how many have been recruited already, and how many remain
to be recruited. All of those are open questions that
(03:21):
I'm hoping to get answers to. We're obviously going through
a very tough time in the economy, and right now
this could be a really good pathway for a lot
of people that need a job to do some very
valuable work, especially considering the time that we need right now.
The only concern will be is after maybe a year
or two, after things die down, hopefully, will those jobs
be viable still. There's a lot of questions that go
(03:43):
with it, unfortunately, but something that needs to be done.
And we've talked about this before, contact tracing and kind
of the attitude and a person needed to be able
to do all this stuff. It is kind of a
challenging job to call somebody cold calls a lot of
times and then convince them, let's say, if they're positive
they come in contact with somebody that's positive, to stay
home for two weeks. It could be a pretty challenging job.
(04:05):
It requires really a lot of people's skills. I was
talking to one disease control branch chief in Riverside County
and she said it can take multiple phone calls to
really build enough trust to reconstruct someone's string of contact
sometimes people will call the public health department to verify
that the phone called they received as in fact public
(04:26):
health contact tracer and not a scam. And it can
take multiple interviews to really have someone trust enough to
disclose whom they might have encountered. That trust is so
important because having people willing to talk about whom they
might have exposed is really key to identifying the chain
of viral transmission that could continue to spread without identifying,
(04:50):
testing and isolating folks who may have been exposed. So
other public health folks I've talked to have really emphasized
the need to ensure that there is wage replacement and
paid sick cleave. So people are willing to be tested
and willing to name folks that they might have exposed
without worrying that they're going to be out of work
themselves or that they're going to put their friends, their families,
(05:12):
and their co workers out of work. Also, that's definitely
going to be an important component to it, especially if
you're basically telling somebody you've got to miss two weeks
of work. Tell us a little bit more about the program.
I've been reading that this new online training program that
they're gonna be working on is going to help standardize
the contact tracing statewide, which is great. I think if
a lot of people working off that same platform, it's
(05:33):
going to just help. And then it's also gonna sync
up with the California's existing digital disease surveillance platform. So
all this stuff to help everybody kind of streamline the
whole thing. And I spoke with a local public health
department officially yesterday who hadn't yet seen the training program.
The state, as far as I know, has not released
any examples of what the training will look like. But
(05:54):
the idea that this public health department officer was so
excited about was that this means that this a core
of contact tracers will be trained the same way, and
so you won't have differences in approaches across the state
for those who are kind of pitching in at the
local level, everybody will have the same level of expertise.
And then this data management platform, again very little detail
(06:16):
has been released from the state, but it's supposed to
sync up with the existing disease surveillance system cal ready
and so what I've heard, and again we don't know
this for sure yet, but what I've heard is that
this can import information from cal ready, so it's kind
of a seamless transition. So if you get a positive
test result reported on cal ready, it should be able
(06:40):
to sync up with this new contact tracing platform. I've
also heard excitement about the fact that this contact tracing
platform will be statewide, which means that it will be
easier to follow cases and contacts that cross county lines, which,
as we see the state opening back up, will certainly
occur more and more. It's good to see the California
(07:01):
is starting to get the ball rolling on getting this
system set up, and as I mentioned earlier, the states
all across the country actually working on their own programs,
whether they share some similarities or not. It is a
robust system that needs to be set up to monitor
the spread of COVID nineteen. So we'll keep monitoring it
and see how it all develops. Rachel Becker, reporter at
(07:21):
cal Matters. Thank you very much for joining us. Thanks
for inviting me. I'm Oscar Ramirez and this has been
your daily coronavirus update. You don't forget effort today's big
news stories. You can check me out on the Daily
Dive podcast every Monday through Friday, So follow US on
I Heart Radio, or wherever you get your podcast
It's Wednesday, May six. I'm Oscar Ramiraz from the Daily
Dive podcast in Los Angeles, and this is your daily
coronavirus update. States around the country are beginning to get
their army of coronavirus detectives ready to work. In California, specifically,
the state has teamed up with two universities to train
more than three thousand employees per week to become contact tracers.
(00:22):
A robust system of contact tracing will be crucial for
states to manage the spread of the virus as they reopened,
and one estimate says that the country needs thirty contact
tracers for every one thousand people. Rachel Becker, reporter at
cal Matters, joins us for more. Thanks for joining us, Rachel,
thanks for having me. I wanted to talk about the
army of coronavirus detectives needed to reopen states. We're gonna
(00:46):
talk about California specifically, but really this is something that's
going to be happening across the country. States need to
get a robust system of contact tracing in order to
help limit the spread of coronavirus once things start getting
back open and once the economy start moving again. So
Rachel tell us a little bit about the plan that
California is going through because they're using the University of California,
(01:08):
Los Angeles and the University of California, San Francisco to
help train a bunch of workers. Tell us about it. So,
California has been doing contact tracing already at the local level.
So the sixty one city and county public health departments
have been conducting contact tracing for forever. It's a it's
a cornerstone of public health for tuberculosis, for s t
(01:31):
I s sexually transmitted infections, and for the novel coronavirus.
But as the coronavirus keeps spreading, it's really taxed their
existing staff. Some have managed to lean on county employees
to help with contact tracing, but yesterday Governor Gavin Newsom
announced that California will be kind of stepping up to
(01:53):
help as well with what he called a training academy
from the University of California, Los Angeles in the University
of California, San Francisco, and this trading academy will provide
twelve hours of online instruction eight hours of in person
instruction to redeployed state employees in large part to help
with contact tracing, and the local health departments in the
(02:16):
state can request help and then they'll be assigned contact
tracers that are part of this new workforce. Now, I
wanted to talk about the number of contact traces that
we would need. The National Association of County and City
Health Officials estimated that the country will need thirty contact
traces for every one thousand Americans, So in California, that's
(02:38):
about twelve thousand that they'll need. And you mentioned just
right now that the governor plans on redeploying state employees.
That's a lot of state employees to shift around. Is
this going to be a potential for new jobs as well,
Like will people be able to apply for these things
or does it just seem right now like it's going
to be state employees only. Yesterday Governor Newsom's said that
(03:00):
they were going to be recruiting from state employees with
kind of the right set of skills, including kind of
what you call the health mindset, language skills, cultural competency.
But whether that will be enough, how exactly they're being recruited,
how many have been recruited already, and how many remain
to be recruited. All of those are open questions that
(03:21):
I'm hoping to get answers to. We're obviously going through
a very tough time in the economy, and right now
this could be a really good pathway for a lot
of people that need a job to do some very
valuable work, especially considering the time that we need right now.
The only concern will be is after maybe a year
or two, after things die down, hopefully, will those jobs
be viable still. There's a lot of questions that go
(03:43):
with it, unfortunately, but something that needs to be done.
And we've talked about this before, contact tracing and kind
of the attitude and a person needed to be able
to do all this stuff. It is kind of a
challenging job to call somebody cold calls a lot of
times and then convince them, let's say, if they're positive
they come in contact with somebody that's positive, to stay
home for two weeks. It could be a pretty challenging job.
(04:05):
It requires really a lot of people's skills. I was
talking to one disease control branch chief in Riverside County
and she said it can take multiple phone calls to
really build enough trust to reconstruct someone's string of contact
sometimes people will call the public health department to verify
that the phone called they received as in fact public
(04:26):
health contact tracer and not a scam. And it can
take multiple interviews to really have someone trust enough to
disclose whom they might have encountered. That trust is so
important because having people willing to talk about whom they
might have exposed is really key to identifying the chain
of viral transmission that could continue to spread without identifying,
(04:50):
testing and isolating folks who may have been exposed. So
other public health folks I've talked to have really emphasized
the need to ensure that there is wage replacement and
paid sick cleave. So people are willing to be tested
and willing to name folks that they might have exposed
without worrying that they're going to be out of work
themselves or that they're going to put their friends, their families,
(05:12):
and their co workers out of work. Also, that's definitely
going to be an important component to it, especially if
you're basically telling somebody you've got to miss two weeks
of work. Tell us a little bit more about the program.
I've been reading that this new online training program that
they're gonna be working on is going to help standardize
the contact tracing statewide, which is great. I think if
a lot of people working off that same platform, it's
(05:33):
going to just help. And then it's also gonna sync
up with the California's existing digital disease surveillance platform. So
all this stuff to help everybody kind of streamline the
whole thing. And I spoke with a local public health
department officially yesterday who hadn't yet seen the training program.
The state, as far as I know, has not released
any examples of what the training will look like. But
(05:54):
the idea that this public health department officer was so
excited about was that this means that this a core
of contact tracers will be trained the same way, and
so you won't have differences in approaches across the state
for those who are kind of pitching in at the
local level, everybody will have the same level of expertise.
And then this data management platform, again very little detail
(06:16):
has been released from the state, but it's supposed to
sync up with the existing disease surveillance system cal ready
and so what I've heard, and again we don't know
this for sure yet, but what I've heard is that
this can import information from cal ready, so it's kind
of a seamless transition. So if you get a positive
test result reported on cal ready, it should be able
(06:40):
to sync up with this new contact tracing platform. I've
also heard excitement about the fact that this contact tracing
platform will be statewide, which means that it will be
easier to follow cases and contacts that cross county lines, which,
as we see the state opening back up, will certainly
occur more and more. It's good to see the California
(07:01):
is starting to get the ball rolling on getting this
system set up, and as I mentioned earlier, the states
all across the country actually working on their own programs,
whether they share some similarities or not. It is a
robust system that needs to be set up to monitor
the spread of COVID nineteen. So we'll keep monitoring it
and see how it all develops. Rachel Becker, reporter at
(07:21):
cal Matters. Thank you very much for joining us. Thanks
for inviting me. I'm Oscar Ramirez and this has been
your daily coronavirus update. You don't forget effort today's big
news stories. You can check me out on the Daily
Dive podcast every Monday through Friday, So follow US on
I Heart Radio, or wherever you get your podcast
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