Paul Bass Photo
Jessica Ye, one of the New Haven contact-tracers.
While communities across the country meet resistance or other obstacles in tracing people’s contact with Covid-19, New Haven offered a model for how to do it right.
So concludes this report from the BBC. It spotlights contract-tracing initiatives in Savannah, Georgia, and New Haven.
“The contact-tracing initiatives in New Haven and Savannah are far from perfect. But they have been recognised by experts in the field as programmes that were started early and run with vigour. Taken together, these two programmes offer a snapshot of the high-stakes drama of contact tracing and show how the system is being put in place in both the northern and the southern parts of the country,” the report read.
The article details efforts by Tyler Shelby and fellow Yale graduate students to assemble a 150-person team in the early days of the pandemic to work in rotation to find out whom Covid-19 patients have been in contact with, then try to track those people down, in an effort to limit the disease’s spread. (The state recently took over contact tracing in town, while the city still is required to offer congregate contact training support and quality assurance.)
Click here to read an April 17 story in the Independent detailing the work of Shelby’s team in conjunction with the city Health Department.