Cook County will spend nearly $41 million to dramatically beef up its contact tracing program in an effort to limit future COVID-19 case surges, but won’t have the program fully staffed until fall, County Board President Toni Preckwinkle announced Thursday.
The program — which involves identifying people afflicted with the disease, ensuring they can isolate and asking people with whom they recently had significant contact to quarantine themselves — is widely viewed as a key element in limiting future outbreaks of the disease.
“While we’ve made tremendous progress, the pandemic is far from over,” Preckwinkle said at a virtual news conference. “We know that we are months, if not a year or more, away from a COVID-19 vaccine. As we move forward, it’s crucial that individuals who are exposed to the disease are notified so that they can isolate themselves, seek medical care if they need it and prevent further spread of the virus.”
Preckwinkle said the efforts, funded with a grant from the Illinois Department of Public Health, would focus extensively on disproportionately affected groups that have “experienced systemic racism,” including African Americans and Latinos, both in terms of tracing and hiring of new contact tracers. The program also will be bilingual so hundreds of thousands of Spanish-speaking residents are not left out.
“This grant is so important for those who have been most impacted by COVID-19,” said Dr. Kiran Joshi, one of two senior medical officers running the county Department of Public Health, who said blacks in the county have been affected at three times the rate of whites and Latinos at four times the rate. “We intend to hire suburban Cook County residents for these jobs who are culturally competent, multilingual and have great communication skills.”
The county, however, will take several months to ramp up the program, even though many social-distancing restrictions have been lifted by the state and there’s concern that a future surge could occur soon because of recent crowded conditions during protests over the Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd.
“We have not yet seen a surge of cases from the recent move into phase three of the Illinois opening and also as a consequence of the demonstrations, but we are watching for any mini-surges that may occur over the next few days or weeks,” said Dr. Rachel Rubin, the public health department’s other chief medical officer.
Joshi said the county currently has 25 people involved on contact tracing, which to date has been focused on vulnerable communities including minorities and those in congregate care settings such as nursing homes and homeless shelters. About 375 more people will be hired, for a total of 400.
For now, though, only program supervisors are being hired, and actual contact tracers won’t be hired until late July and won’t be in place until early August. They will be hired in groups of 50 people to 100, a process that will be completed sometime in the fall, he said.
“I would concur that speed is of the essence, but I would also argue that given the significant size of this kind of initiative, it’s important to ensure that we’re being thoughtful about how we establish the processes and operations and management structure,” Joshi said. “I think that is absolutely fundamental.”
And, if there’s a surge before hiring commences, there are contingency plans to quickly bring more tracers into the program, Joshi added.
In addition to finding people with COVID-19 and reaching out to their contacts, the program also will link people with medical care, housing, food and social services needed to make it possible for folks to isolate or quarantine.
The county is not yet taking applications, but it has set up a website explaining the program, with a link to the state Department of Public Health’s form for expressing interest in becoming a contact tracer.
The county’s program would serve residents who live in suburban Cook County, with the exception of Evanston, Skokie, Oak Park and Stickney Township, which have their own health departments. About 2.5 million people fall under the county public health department’s jurisdiction.
The Chicago Department of Public Health, which serves about 2.7 million city residents, announced in late May its own plans to bring on 600 additional contact tracers by mid-September. That’s a $56 million effort.
