New York will create an army of tracers to fight the coronavirus. These tracers will track down people who had come in contact with infected people and test them to determine if they need to be isolated.
Rising cases of the coronavirus in New York is causing them to consider hiring an army of tracer to track down people who might have come into contact with an infected person. Currently, the job is held by workers in their hundreds. However, daily cases recorded in New York for the past few weeks have been in thousands.
New York state has recorded 277,000 cases of coronavirus infections in the last few months. In comparison to other countries outside of the US, it has recorded the most cases. 21,291 people have also succumbed to the virus in the state.
Creation of an army of tracers
In the coming weeks, the state has indicated that it will be ramping up the number of workers in their tracking department. This army of tracers will have a crucial role in the fight against the virus, where they will track the movement of coronavirus patients to determine who they had come into contact with.
Once they determine where these victims have been and who they have come into contact with, they will then contact these contacts and urge them to self-isolate and get them tested. The process will be repeated for tracked contact who test positive.
Contact tracing
Contact tracing is not a new method when dealing with a pandemic. It has been used in the fight against other diseases such as Ebola, Tuberculosis, and AIDS. The method has also gained popularity due to its success in South Korea, where they have been able to contain the spread of the virus through an aggressive contact tracing policy.
The South Korean authorities used cell phone tracking, credit card transaction tracking and CCTV cameras to track down locations of contacts of coronavirus victims. This ensured they were able to curtail the spread of the virus by choking it before these people were able to spread it to other people.
Governor’s proposition
Governor Cuomo has called for the creation of the army of tracers. The estimates were put at around 5,000 to 10,000 tracers working full time to track down coronavirus contacts and curb the spread of the virus. With hospitalization numbers going down in New York state.
Containment of the virus in New York will require aggressive tracking and the army of tracers will actually reduce the rate of new infections according to the New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio.
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