U.S. States Ramp Up Contact Tracing for Covid-19, About Five Months Too Late

Public health officials in Oklahoma announced on Friday the state will begin using text messages to help contact people who may have been exposed to the coronavirus by patients who have tested positive. It's a wise decision for contact tracers in the state, given the reluctance of many people to answer phones from unknown numbers, but it highlights the fact that the U.S. is still months behind other wealthy countries when it comes to fighting covid-19. The job of contact tracers is to get information from people who test positive for a communicable disease and figure out who else they may have infected to contact those people and warn them. This kind of work is incredibly common during normal times when someone tests positive for a sexually transmitted disease, but it's also vital during a pandemic like our current coronavirus crisis. "This new method [of texting] will enable the contacts to conveniently fill out their own contact tracing interview form, receive specific quarantine-related messaging, and acquire a letter of exclusion without ever interacting with a contact tracer," Oklahoma State Department of Health said in a press release. "For those who do not have a cell phone or prefer to receive… Read full this story

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