Updated by Director of Student Health, Approved by CIRT

March 14, 2022 By Maureen Zambito

WEST LIBERTY, W.Va., March 14, 2022 – Please find below updated contact tracing guidelines as approved by the West Liberty University Critical Incident Response Team (CIRT) and following CDC and Wheeling-Ohio County Health Department best practices.

Definition of terms

• Quarantine – separation from exposed people
• Isolation – separation from infected ipeople, even without symptoms
• Close contact in higher education – within 6 feet of someone for a cumulative total of 15 minutes or more in a 24 hour period, regardless of masking practices.

Students/faculty/staff should report if they are diagnosed with COVID-19 or if they were named close contact of a positive case of COVID-19 using the positive report form linked here.

If you test positive for COVID-19 (isolate)

Everyone, regardless of their vaccination status:

• Stay home for 5 days. If you are a student residing on campus and cannot return home to self-isolate, WLU will attempt to provide you with self-isolation space based on availability.
• Complete the positive report form, indicating that you have tested positive.
• Inform your close contacts of the possible exposure (contacts see info below)
• Inform your professors that you cannot attend classes in person.
• If you tested off-campus, upload a copy of your positive test result showing your name and test date to the Student Health Portal. Home tests will not be accepted at this time.
• If you have symptoms and your symptoms are gone or greatly resolved after 5 days, you can leave isolation. If you have a fever, you should continue to self-isolate until your fever goes away. Raised
• Health Services will endeavor to contact you before your isolation ends and send you a written release of isolation.
• You will be advised to continue wearing a mask around others for another 5 days.
• Athletes must be seen by Athletic Training before resuming sport participation.

If you have been exposed to someone with Covid-19 (quarantine)
I. If you:

• have been boosted Where
• Completed primary series of Pfizer or Moderna vaccine in the last 5 months Where
• Completed primary series of J&J vaccine in the last 2 months

Then you should:

• Wear a mask around others for 10 days
• Test on Day 5. If you are a student, you can contact Student Health Services to schedule a free COVID test at 304-336-8049, Monday through Friday from 7 p.m. to 3 p.m. or you can test at an off-campus location and upload results to the Student Health Portal. Employees should request a test at one of the local testing sites, such as Doctors Urgent Care or Roxby Labs.

1. If you:

• Completed Pfizer or Moderna primary vaccine series more than 5 months ago and is not boosted Where
• Completed the first streak of J&J over 2 months ago and is not boosted Where
• Are not vaccinated

Then you should:

Stay home for 5 days. After that, continue wearing a mask around others for another 5 days.

• Fill in the positive report form, specifying that you are a direct contact
• Inform your teachers that you cannot attend classes in person
• Test on Day 5. You can contact Student Health Services to schedule a free COVID test at 304-336-8049, Monday through Friday 7-3 p.m. or you can test at an off-campus location and upload the results to the student health portal. . Employees should request a test at one of the local testing sites, such as Doctors Urgent Care or Roxby Labs.

If you develop symptoms, get tested and stay home

NOTE: Family Contacts are people who share a living space with someone diagnosed with COVID-19. This includes bedrooms, bathrooms, living rooms, kitchens, etc. This also includes roommates in on-campus residence halls, apartments and houses, and roommates in on-campus halls of residence. Family contacts Homework quarantine if exposed to the case.

• If the contact can not separated from the case inside the home, the contact should be quarantined for the case’s (minimum) 5-day isolation period plus an additional 5 days. The contact will then have to wear a mask for an additional 5 days.

The separation requirements are as follows:

• The case should never be in the same room as household members.
• The case cannot share plates, cups, dishes or phones with household members.
• The case should have its own bathroom. Not possible? Housekeeping should do daily cleaning.

If household contacts develop symptoms of COVID-19, they should get tested.

*The protocol is subject to change

Sources:

GREENVILLE COUNTY, SC (WSPA) – School officials in Greenville County have said that starting Tuesday, testing to stay and quarantine practices will be suspended. They said fingers are crossed it can stay that way.

“It’s starting to feel a little more normal. I think that’s what people were hoping for,” spokesman Tim Waller said.

Greenville County schools have seen a decrease in positive COVID-19 cases.

“For two consecutive one-week periods, 0.3% of our population, speaking of students and staff, tested positive for covid,” Waller said.

Which, according to DHEC, means they don’t have to follow the same practices as before.

“As long as we have two consecutive one-week periods of Covid cases below 10%, we no longer have to use the test to stay, we no longer have to quarantine,” he said. declared.

Spokesman Tim Waller said he would carefully monitor the numbers and follow all guidelines.

Further afield in Union County, school days will also be a little different.

“As long as we maintain a positivity rate of less than 10%, we don’t have to do the quarantine or the stay tests,” said Eric Childers, director of administration.

“If we go over that in one location, we will place that school under a test procedure to stay, as we used to before,” he said.

Administrative Director Eric Childers says all of their schools currently meet these criteria.

“The past two years have been really difficult, and so, hopefully, we can complete the 2021-2022 school year and our children can experience what the real school was like without all the restrictions we had to put in place. , ” he said.

Childers said after Monday night’s school board meeting, the mask mandate for Union County schools was also lifted.

For worried parents or students, Waller says they have ways to ease your mind.

“We have rapid tests that we can give to families, we have the drive-through tests,” Waller said.

He says anyone who tests positive will still need to follow the same quarantine procedures. But, for now, it looks like classrooms will have a little more normality.

To track the positivity rate at Greenville County schools, click here.

7NEWS has contacted several school districts regarding their plans, here are those who responded.

Spartaburg County School District 1:

We are currently reviewing our school data from the past week and planning to update our procedures to align with the latest SCDHEC guidelines. We have implemented the latest guidelines from the South Carolina Department of Education that no longer require the use of masks by students or staff on state-owned and operated school buses. We plan to communicate additional changes to our COVID-19 procedures later this week.

Sandra Williams, director of communications for Spartanburg County School District 1

Spartaburg County School District 2:

We will follow the guidelines as indicated. Currently, none of our schools are close to the 10% threshold. Our hope is that with the hygiene and cleaning protocols we have in place, we will definitely stay away from the 10% mark and take a big step towards normality in our schools.

said Spartanburg County School District 2 public relations director Adrian Acosta.

Spartaburg County School District 5:

“We will follow the new DHEC guidelines and rule out close contact and quarantine.”

Melissa Robinette, Public Relations Manager for Spartanburg County School District 5

Spartanburg County School District 7

“District 7 has not yet made a decision on next steps. We plan to discuss and communicate this in the coming days.

Says Beth Lancaster, director of communications for Spartanburg School District 7

On March 17, 2020, the Rhode Island Department of Health notified Dr. Neal Rogol that he, like countless other small business owners in the state, was to close. “It was an enforced vacation that wasn’t a vacation,” said Rogol, a family dentist whose office is at 24 Salt Pond Road in South Kingstown.

Dentistry has always been at the forefront of infection control, according to Rogol. Viruses that have beset civilization in recent decades have forced medical professionals to wear more personal protective equipment – ​​such as gloves, scrubs or some other barrier to cover clothing and masks, it has therefore felt the changes that COVID-19 would herald. When her practice reopened in late May 2020, the Rhode Island Dental Association asked all dentists to wear “a heavier filtration mask,” and she distributed them to dentists for emergency use.

“The dental association really came to bat,” Rogol said. “The association has distributed hand sanitizers for all offices, a number of high filtration masks and disposable gowns. We have implemented the use of N95 masks, which have the highest possible filtration rate. Rogol also procured face shields because, he explained, “when you use drills, you create aerosols, and the coronavirus spreads through aerosols or droplets.”

There were also equipment that dentists were instructed not to use, such as the ultrasonic cleaner, which is used to clean heavy deposits of hardened tartar, known in his profession as “tartar”. These machines also produce aerosols. Rogol hygienists had to perform ‘manual descaling’ until restrictions were eased; they became more knowledgeable about the virus and people were vaccinated. “At one point, many offices weren’t even doing any cleaning,” Rogol said. “We weren’t even polishing.”

Gradually, the dentists started polishing and started using the ultrasonic cleaner again when the Centers for Disease Control gave them permission to “do whatever we wanted to do,” according to Rogol. Currently, Rogol’s office is a bulwark against the disease. All surfaces are cleaned with an antiviral barrier based on hydrogen peroxide. At a cost of around $5,000, Rogol purchased two air filtration machines, which use pure active technology, and three “extra-oral evacuation” (outside of the mouth) machines that evacuate aerosols and contain three layers of filtration.

Rising inflation and the supply chain crisis have made N95 masks both more expensive and difficult to buy. “Hospitals told their staff they had to use the same masks over and over again, but I didn’t want to, so I stockpiled as many as I could.” Initially, he also took the advice to put masks in sealed Tupperware containers until masks became more readily available. The gloves, which Rogol said once cost $6.99 a box, have soared to $24.99 a box. They came back at a reasonable price of $8.99 a box, but the upfront expense was significant.

Rogol also took other precautions, including limiting the number of patients who could sit in the waiting room. At one point, some of his patients had the option of waiting in their car to be called in turn. “We still require all patients to wear masks in the office until they sit in the chair. It’s very controversial because the state lifted the restrictions, but in a health care setting, masks are appropriate,” Rogol said. “We screen all staff and take the temperature of all patients when they arrive. We make sure they are healthy and have not knowingly been exposed to anyone with a virus.”

Part of this screening process involves patients filling out a COVID questionnaire, and all patients, prior to treatment, must rinse their mouth with hydrogen peroxide solution. “We try to protect everyone, and patients understand and appreciate that.”

Rogol says things may never be the same as before the pandemic.

“I don’t know if it will be a day like before,” he said. “I still have patients who don’t come if they don’t feel any discomfort or pain. The phobia of the virus sometimes outweighs the need for preventive care. Dental care is linked to overall good health, so maintaining good health is more important than ever.

Stephanie White, owner of Optimal Wellness Therapeutic Massage at 24 Salt Pond Road, has been a massage therapist for 10 years, and the trials and tribulations of being a small business owner have never been more pronounced than they have been. been the last two. In March 2020, as COVID-19 spread rapidly, she was forced to shut down her business for four months, which put her and her family in dire economic straits.

She had no income for a few weeks until she became eligible for pandemic unemployment insurance, which she estimated covered about 70% of the income she was receiving at the time. pre-COVID. In the meantime, White said: “I still had overhead and we had to give up a lot of bills at home. One was the mortgage payment. You spend 10 years building a business, and then all of a sudden…”

White’s business expenses were also piling up. “The majority of people who work in this industry (massage therapy) are independent contractors, so we were not eligible to receive PPE (personal protective equipment) as (Internal Revenue Service form) 1099 employees. ” White explained. When the Rhode Island Department of Health informed White on the last day of May 2020 that it could reopen in June, she and her staff were unprepared. “We couldn’t open right away because we had to buy the things we needed. We had to buy all kinds of air filters, and we had to follow all kinds of cleaning protocols and have different types of equipment to be compliant,” White explained.

She was able to reopen Optimal Wellness on July 1, but she and other therapists have had to get used to the post-COVID adjustments the virus has forced on all sectors of society. “We had to take fewer customers because we needed more time to clean; additionally, we had to screen all of our customers to make sure everyone was healthy and following the rules,” she said. “And laundry is more expensive, cleaners, air filters, all the equipment is more expensive. We now employ professional cleaners instead of doing our own cleaning.

White herself caught COVID in November 2020, but credits her protocols for ensuring that none of her clients reported falling ill.

“Someone in my family tested positive, so I got tested immediately,” White said. “I was at work because I didn’t know I was HIV positive. I called every client I had seen that week, and not a single person got sick, as we followed all the protocols. After that a lot of people didn’t want to come in because I got COVID. It made me feel more comfortable with the precautions I was using because not a single person ended up getting it.

“That was probably the worst thing, telling people they were exposed,” White added. “I called everyone for the week, maybe fifteen people. We followed strict protocols and obviously it paid off.

Stricter protocols and mitigations followed as the Omicron variant began to spread. In October 2021, the Department of Health required anyone licensed with its agency to be vaccinated. Two of its employees refused to comply, so Optimal Wellness has only three massage therapists left.

While the Omicron variant appears to have peaked and Governor Dan McKee has relaxed his masking and vaccination mandates, White is more optimistic about the future. “I think people are more comfortable doing a one-on-one activity rather than being in a large crowd,” she said. “Everyone has done well not to come when they are not feeling well. One week we had 10 cancellations from people feeling unwell or testing positive, but lately we’ve been in a good phase. We have had no cancellations in the past two weeks. The problem is having to pivot with all the different changes. The cost of everything is going up, and you look around and see all these other businesses closing. It’s just exhausting having to keep up. »

TUCSON, Ariz. (KGUN) – At the start of COVID, public health officials attempted to contact everyone who tested positive. Now, some agencies have concluded that they just can’t catch everyone, so they’re changing their strategy.

Health officials depended on contact tracing to help reduce the spread of COVID. The idea was that if you tested positive, you would receive a call from a health worker asking who you have been around so they can determine if those contacts could also be spreading COVID.

But Omicron sent such a high number of cases that health experts concluded they couldn’t reach everyone, so they better shift priorities.

The Arizona Department of Health Services said it is reducing contact tracing for the general population and focusing on congregate living — places like nursing homes and homeless shelters where populations are most vulnerable and where nearby neighborhoods facilitate the spread of the virus.

Pima County Health Director Dr. Terry Cullen says Pima County is still working to contact anyone who tests positive, but is giving some settings an extra priority.

“The predominant impetus for contact tracing right now is our school cases and our community life cases. Both of these continue to be very high risk situations. And we continue to do contact tracing in them.

Dr. Cullen says the county was hitting a thousand new cases a day last month. Unless someone refuses to cooperate – and some refuse – a tracer may learn that two or three other people need to call. The phone call itself can last an average of 20 minutes.

Dr Cullen says: “That means we would have had a thousand cases to investigate and two to three thousand contacts. This was not the case at the time. So to be blunt as we say we are still doing contact tracing. In the midst of these very high numbers, people were not being contacted.

She says the number of more recent cases has declined, but is still well above levels considered dangerously high.

Dr Cullen says more than data is lost when people don’t hear about contact tracers. Tracers can offer advice on how best to quarantine and where to find services that can help get through their COVID cases.

If you have been around someone with COVID-19, you should take precautions to avoid spreading the disease. You may find out from a friend, family member or workplace that you have been in close contact with someone who has symptoms or who has tested positive for COVID-19. This puts you at a higher risk of getting sick and spreading the disease to others.

Close contact means spending at least 15 minutes or more within 6 feet of someone (family, friend, co-worker, acquaintance, or someone you don’t know) in a day, with or without a mask.

If you had close contact

1. Follow quarantine guidelines, including wearing a mask. Isolation and quarantine advice

2. If you can, get tested 5 days after exposure or if you develop symptoms. It is best to get tested 5 days after being exposed. The test may not work if you get tested too soon. You can get tested through your doctor or at a community testing site. Call 211 for more information. Currently, many people are looking for tests and resources are limited. Test appointment can be hard to find.

3. If you develop symptoms or test positive, follow isolation advice. Keep away from others, even in your own home, so you don’t make others sick.

4. Continue to wear a properly fitted mask for an additional 5 days if you are quarantined for a shorter period.

KOTA KINABALU: Consumers in Sabah say there is a shortage of Covid-19 self-test kits in the market.

On Wednesday, Feb. 9, some shoppers reported difficulty obtaining even a single test kit given the rise in Covid-19 cases in the state.

Many are thought to have been forced to seek out the kits as they are either close or casual contacts of positive cases or show symptoms of infection such as mild fever and cough.

One shopper, Bev Joeman, said she had visited shops and pharmacies around Damai and Foh Sang near town, but could not find a single self-test kit.

“There are nine of us in the family and we need it as some of us are starting to have a slight fever and cough, while others have recently had occasional contact with a Covid-19 positive relative,” said she declared.

She added that after looking in several other places, she managed to get five self-test kits.

“The cases are increasing and these kits are out of stock…we are very concerned,” she said.

Another customer, Claudius Chan, posted on Facebook that she was also having trouble finding the kits in her home town of Beaufort.

She said buyers should make reservations before new stock arrives.

Zura Wong of Papar said many stores in his area were also facing a shortage of self-testing kits.

Some customers have resorted to placing their order through e-commerce platforms.

In Tuaran, notices were posted in many storefronts informing customers that test kits were out of stock.

Mariah Doksil, who also couldn’t get one of the kits, said she just had to stay calm and monitor her children’s health after a child in her son’s preschool class was recently tested positive.

“I will try to look for the kits again tomorrow and at the same time check if any of us (have symptoms),” the mother-of-three said.

She said they would go to the hospital or a private clinic for a check-up if a family member got sick.

Sabah recorded a total of 3,333 new Covid-19 cases on Wednesday.

The Kenai Peninsula Borough School District is no longer conducting COVID-19 contact tracing at schools where universal masking is in place, in accordance with updates to the district’s mitigation plan announced last month . Additionally, staff and students who test positive and show symptoms of COVID-19 are now allowed to return to school or work as early as five days after testing positive, provided the symptoms have resolved. for at least 24 hours without the aid of medication. .

KPBSD communications director Pegge Erkeneff said on Thursday that the decision to halt contact tracing in schools where universal masking is observed was partly due to a spike in cases that nurses and district staff ” couldn’t keep up” in mid-January. A review of the number of close contact students who later tested positive, as well as the time it took for school staff to contact the trace were also factored into the decision, Erkeneff said.

When a school moves to universal masking, Erkeneff said, the time of nurses and staff is “no longer spent” on contact tracing. More generally, Erkeneff said the trend of halting contact tracing is something the KPBSD leadership is watching.

“In mid-January, with the increase in positive cases of COVID-19, our staff were unable to follow up on contact tracing,” Erkeneff said via email.

Erkeneff confirmed that stopping contact tracing in schools where universal masking is in place will skew close contact data reflected on the district’s COVID-19 dashboard by reducing those numbers. She said the dashboard will still reflect data from people who self-report and at schools where contact tracing is still happening.

As of Thursday, at least 13 of KPBSD’s 42 schools — representing about 2,800 students and staff in the district — were operating with universal masking. To determine whether a school enters or exits Universal Indoor Masking, KPBSD uses the criteria outlined in the district’s COVID-19 mitigation plan.

A “conversation” between district administrators and school site administrators is triggered when a school district meets four of the five criteria set out in the plan. Factors considered include a school community positivity rate of 3% or greater, a student absenteeism rate of 25% or greater, the capacity of local and regional hospitals and intensive care units, the number of cases of COVID-19 of one community per 100,000 people and the impact of school staff absenteeism. rate.

Additionally, under changes announced last month, KPBSD staff and students who test positive and show symptoms of COVID-19 are now allowed to return to school or work as early as five days after tested positive. That’s as long as the symptoms go away for at least 24 hours without the help of medication.

Under the district’s previous iteration of the policy, which was announced Jan. 11, COVID-positive students and staff could return to school or work five days after testing positive, but only if they were asymptomatic.

Schools will still follow the district’s symptom-free protocol and apply multi-level COVID-19 mitigation strategies. Students and staff are also encouraged to take advantage of testing resources made available by the district, such as free at-home testing kits, in-school testing, and testing from community partners.

According to the district’s COVID-19 dashboard, which went live last August, more than 1,650 positive COVID-19 test results have been reported to the district by students and more than 350 positive results have been reported by staff. KPBSD’s COVID-19 Dashboard can be viewed at covid19.kpbsd.org/dashboard.

Contact reporter Ashlyn O’Hara at ashlyn.ohara@peninsulaclarion.com.

At the start of the pandemic, the COVIDSafe app was designed as a tool to improve contact tracing. And a multimedia campaign promoted it as helping to find more COVID contacts faster.

Today, almost two years after its launch in April 2020, we publish in Lancet Public Health our assessment of the effectiveness and usefulness of the app in New South Wales.

We analyzed data from 619 recorded COVID cases in NSW aged over 12 and their contacts between May and November 2020. We also surveyed contact tracers to find out if they found the app useful.

Our analysis showed that the app did not add much value to the existing conventional contact tracing system.

A total of 22% of cases used the app. Most (61%) of the contacts registered by the app as “close contacts” turned out not to be epidemiologically linked to a case. The app only detected 15% of true close contacts identified by conventional contact tracing.

In total, COVIDSafe detected only 17 additional true close contacts in New South Wales during the six-month evaluation period.

This has resulted in substantial additional work for contact tracers and overall has not made a significant contribution to the COVID response in NSW.

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Read more: From COVID control to chaos – what now for Australia? Two paths are open to us

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Tracing takes time

Interviewing new cases to identify, trace and isolate their close contacts is a critical public health activity. But that takes time, and contact tracers can be quickly overwhelmed when the number of cases increases.

Digital contact tracing apps were enthusiastically adopted at the start of the COVID pandemic in many countriesincluding Australia.

Like many other tracing apps, COVIDSafe uses smartphones’ built-in Bluetooth feature to exchange signals between phones.

The duration, frequency and transmission strength of these “digital handshakes” are used to determine whether two smartphone users have come into “close contact” with each other.

Poor ability to correctly detect and identify close contacts

During our study period, less than a quarter of all cases used the app. That’s half the proportion of the general Australian public who have done so.

Of the cases that used the app, many did not have a single contact recorded by the app. For others, contact tracers were unable to access app data.

Contact tracers could use app data for 32 (5%) of 619 cases during our study period. Of these cases, only 79 (39%) of the 205 contacts recorded by the app as “close contacts” could be verified as true close contacts. This suggests a low positive predictive value of the app.

Here are examples of fake close contacts recorded by the app:

• neighbors in different apartments in apartment buildings

• office workers in adjoining rooms

• customers from nearby restaurants

• people waiting in separate cars at drive-through COVID testing clinics.

The vast majority (85%) of close contacts identified by conventional contact tracing were not detected by the app, indicating low sensitivity.

Some additional contacts detected

In the six months of our study, there were only 17 true close contacts identified by COVIDSafe who would otherwise have been missed – a tiny fraction of the more than 25,300 close contacts detected and tracked through conventional contact tracing in New South Wales during the same period.

None of those 17 contacts have tested positive. COVIDSafe therefore did not contribute to preventing new exposures in New South Wales during our evaluation period.

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Read more: Free rapid antigen tests make economic sense for governments, our analysis shows

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Technological defects

Contact tracers didn’t find the app easy to use. Some said the app doesn’t seem to work as reliably on all types of phones. The number of contacts on iPhones was grossly underestimated, while those on Android phones were overestimated.

Contact tracers have also noted the app’s apparent inability to properly save contacts unless it’s open. This could explain the large number of cases without any contact recorded in our study.

The process of matching close contacts identified by the app with those identified during case interviews was considered time-consuming, especially since most of the contacts detected by the app were not actually close contacts.

Staff interviewed said it could easily overwhelm the contact tracing system if the number of cases had been higher, paradoxically reducing the usefulness of the app when it was needed most.

Overall, contact tracers’ perceptions of the app ranged from “not having much impact” to being an extra step that increased the workload without adding much value.

Little added value at high costs

In our study, COVIDSafe did not make a significant contribution to the COVID response in New South Wales in 2020. Instead, the app created a high workload without any clear benefit.

This contrasts with the 7.7 million Australian dollars he cost to develop and run COVIDSafe until the end of April 2021, with estimated maintenance between $60,000 and $75,000 per month since.

The arrival of the highly transmissible variant of Omicron at the end of 2021 in Australia, coinciding with the lifting of most public health restrictions, has led to a massive increase in the number of cases, forcing a series of major adjustments in the search for contacts.

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Read more: Australia has all but ditched the COVIDSafe app in favor of QR codes (so be sure to check in)

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In most parts of Australia, contact tracing now plays a very limited role in controlling COVID. Nevertheless, it is likely to stay a key public health intervention for infectious diseases in the future.

For digital contact tracing apps to be effective and useful, it will be important to involve contact tracers when designing the system, testing the underlying technology under real-world conditions, and evaluating the app regularly. after deployment.

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Dr Anthea Katelaris, a public health physician who worked at the Western Sydney Local Health District Public Health Unit at the time of the study, co-authored the research referenced in this article.

YOLO COUNTY (CBS13) – CBS13 has learned that several people have tested positive for Covid-19 and have not received calls or text messages from contact tracers for weeks.

This raised two questions: are people unknowingly exposing others and is contact tracing necessary?

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A person will test positive for Covid-19 and will only receive a call or text from contact tracers after they have already tested negative, meaning anyone they have seen in person in the meantime has already potentially been infected.

“If contact tracing doesn’t happen in a timely manner, it won’t help,” said Dr. Jeffrey Klausner, professor of medicine and public health at USC.

Dr Klausner says that with the omicron Covid-19 variant prevalent, the program is of little value.

“Omicron has a shorter incubation period,” he said. “To effectively monitor omicron through contact tracing, calls should be made within 24-48 hours of a person testing positive.”

And it is not possible. Due to high demand for testing, local labs are being beefed up and positive results take several days to reach the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) which is in charge of contact tracing notifications.

“Last week in Yolo County, we had the most positive tests we’ve ever had,” said Yolo County spokesman John Fout.

Yolo County has had a record 238 cases per 100,000 people.

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“When you have that many tests, you’re going to have test delays,” Fout said.

Delayed contact tracing means potential for more Covid-19 infections.

“There are a few backups on the state system. The state system is a kind of failsafe. Other systems are especially schools,” Fout said. “If they have a positive contact, they will let people know, as well as workplaces. When there is a positive result, they notify everyone in the office.

So what is contact tracing good for? According to job search site Indeed, the average salary for contact tracers is $27.83 per hour.

Dr. Klausner says the money spent may not be worth it anymore.

“The contact tracing program should be redesigned,” Dr. Klausner said. “Staff could come out to motivate people to get vaccinated. They could also be reassigned to case management.

This would mean focusing only on reaching out to at-risk populations and connecting them to medical care.

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CBS13 reached out to CDPH to ask about delays in their system and if they were considering a new role for contact tracers. We haven’t had a response.