Local governments ‘overwhelmed’ in race to trace U.S. COVID contacts

Many health departments losing race to warn contacts of COVID victims As the pandemic claims hundreds of American lives daily, many municipalities lack the money and staff to warn people who have been exposed, Reuters found. Reuters

The soaring number of COVID-19 cases in the United States has far outstripped many local health departments’ ability to trace the contacts of those infected, a step critical in containing the virus’ spread.

With the pandemic claiming about a thousand American lives a day, many city and county departments say they lack the money and staff to expeditiously identify people who have been exposed, according to a Reuters survey of 121 local agencies, as well as interviews with dozens of state and local officials, epidemiologists and tracers.  

The United States badly lags other wealthy countries in contact tracing, including South Korea and Germany, which ramped up their programs months ago. Contributing to the faltering U.S. response is the government’s failure to provide accurate and timely diagnostic testing, something other countries were able to roll out much faster and more broadly.

On Alabama’s hard-hit Gulf Coast, health department staffers are stretched so thin they are directing individuals who test positive to notify any contacts themselves, said Rendi Murphree, director of Mobile County’s Bureau of Disease Surveillance and Environmental Services.

“Everything is overwhelmed,” she said.

Adding to the challenge has been a sharp politicization of the COVID-19 response, with many Americans, from President Donald Trump on down, often portraying mask-wearing and other measures as an infringement of personal liberty.

The United States has by far the world’s largest COVID-19 caseload, with over 4.6 million confirmed infections and more than 155,000 deaths. Yet public health measures during the pandemic have been largely decentralized, coming down to patchwork efforts by state, and especially local, governments. Federal funding has proved unreliable, caught up in fierce debate over the crisis...