After former President Clinton, NY Governor Cuomo, Chelsea Clinton and CA Governor Newsom called for an ‘army of contact tracers’ to monitor citizens who have tested positive for COVID-19 and their contacts, Washington DC posted job openings to become an investigator with “Trace Force.”
Operating under the Department of Health (DC Health), Trace Force investigators will interview those who have tested positive for the virus – collecting “demographic, clinical, social and historical data,” while “conducting an assessment to determine whether safe isolation can be achieved at home.” The program is a 13-month appointment.
Those who have been in contact with a positive case will be contacted to assess whether they have symptoms and require quarantine, and will ‘appropriate escalate’ cases when needed. Investigators will also use ‘data management systems’ to log interactions.
Entry level investigators will earn between $51,059and 65,747 per year, while lead investigators will make between $76,126and $97,375. The program manager, who will provide “management oversight and direction” to multiple contact tracing units, will earn between $119,706 and $167,586 per year.
Trace Force is the new Space Force https://t.co/pVQeEmx20M
— Kayla Tausche (@kaylatausche) May 5, 2020
DC currently employs 65 contact tracers according to Mayor Muriel Bowser, who said last week that the district will add 135 more workers, and will eventually need 900.
“The goal of contact tracing is to identify nearly all cases of COVID-19, isolate infected individuals, find and alert their contacts, and then quarantine all the contacts,” said Bowser, adding “How we identify [the sick], isolate them, reach their contacts, and quarantine them, will determine how successful we are in reopening” the city.
According to DC Health contact tracer Malachi Stewart, contact tracers will call people to let them know they may have been in an area where coronavirus was detected, reports WUSA9. Beyond that, “[We’ll ask] what health equipment did you have on?” adding “Were you wearing a mask? Were you staying 6 feet away from people?”
During a recent Clinton Global Initiative University livestream, former President Bill Clinton spoke of the need to track people “who are positive” with COVID-19, and described the need for an “army” of young people, according to DC Dirty Laundry.
California Governor Gavin Newsom agreed, responding that “The predicate for getting back to some semblance of normalcy is our ability to identify individuals through testing; to be able to trace their contacts; to isolate individuals that have either been exposed or quarantine people that are testing positive.”
This can only be accomplished if people “allow for their privacy to be impacted by that kind of acuity of attention based upon where they’ve been and who they talked to.”
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