Inslee unveils contact tracing plan for Washington

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D) announced Tuesday that the state plans to hire and train more than 1,300 contact tracers by the end of this week in an effort to limit the spread of the coronavirus. 

Inslee said the 1,371 contact tracers will allow more businesses to open and more people to be active in public while helping to slow and prevent the spread of COVID-19. Inslee’s extended stay-at-home order is currently set to expire at the end of May. 

According to Inslee, the information about who came into contact with someone with a confirmed case of COVID-19 will be confidential. Contacts will not be told the name of the person who may have exposed them to COVID-19.

He said the plan involves contacting people within 24 hours of a positive test result and talking to their close contacts within 48 hours.

Contact tracing is a pillar of basic public health, a critical element in battling infectious disease around the globe. The goal is to identify those who have been infected with a virus and those with whom the infected person has come into contact. 

In Washington, when someone tests positive for COVID-19, Inslee said an interviewer will reach out by phone. They will ask who that person has been in close contact with, then reach out to those other people to let them know they have been exposed. Those people would need to isolate or quarantine themselves, but there will be no enforcement. 

Inslee will also require restaurants, once they are allowed to reopen, to “create a daily log of customers and maintain that daily log for 30 days, including telephone/email contact information, and time in,” to make it easier for contact tracers. But the measure could raise privacy concerns, especially if the information is not properly secured. 

In a statement, Inslee acknowledged that voluntary quarantine will be a challenge, “but it is one of the most critical portions of this entire endeavor.” Inslee said his office is looking at ways to address the challenges quarantine may pose on some families.

Public health experts widely agree that states need a massive boost in their ability to contact, trace and isolate people who may have been exposed to the virus. It is one of the main ways states could begin to ease rigid physical distancing measures and reopen closed businesses. 

The federal government has largely left it up to the states to build their contact tracing capacity. But contact tracing can work only if the number of new cases the United States confirms every day begins to bend down to a manageable number and if the tracers have the ability to test people broadly and get results quickly. 

The number of contact tracers a state will need is based on population, as well as the severity and spread of the virus outbreak. If there are more contacts, more people will need to be hired. Some states have set a benchmark of 30 health workers per every 100,000 people.

Inslee said in the interim, the contact tracers will be comprised of 351 National Guard personnel, 630 local and state health workers and 390 state Department of Licensing staffers. The state’s Department of Health plans to continue training more workers and volunteers to replace them over time, he said.

Updated 1:35 p.m.