Contact Tracing Proving to Be a Difficult Element of Wisconsin's Plan to Battle the Coronavirus
Tuesday, October 27th, 2020 -- 12:31 PM
(AP) -A key element of Wisconsin’s plan to help contain the COVID-19 pandemic is proving to be difficult.With an average of 3,400 daily cases reported in the last week in Wisconsin, and an additional 3,626 positive tests confirmed in Sunday’s update, contact tracers are now so overrun that some have begun to wonder whether they can keep up with the task at hand. The total number of cases since the pandemic began is approaching 200,000. Some Wisconsin counties are so strapped that they’re now asking infected residents to reach out to their contacts themselves. That’s why Dane County, the second-most populous in the state, said in a news release it has switched to a “crisis model” of contact tracing.
Officials at the state Department of Health Services have declined to provide specific metrics about the success of Wisconsin’s tracing efforts, such as the percentage of people it has reached and how quickly, but recent press briefings have shown the difficulty of the job, the Post Crescent reported. The department’s chief medical officer, Dr. Ryan Westergaard, told reporters last week that Wisconsin’s entire public health infrastructure “cannot keep up,” including state, local and tribal health offices.
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