Henderson call center to help with backlog of COVID-19 investigations

Working with the Southern Nevada Health District, the state of Nevada plans to task the call center with calling individuals who have tested positive for COVID-19 and requesting the names of their close contacts. These close contacts can then be notified that they may have been exposed to the coronavirus and should self-quarantine to avoid spreading the disease.

The contract with the call center would add 100 full-time positions to assist with disease investigation, said Julia Peek, a deputy administrator with the Nevada Department of Health and Human Services. The aim is for the call center operation to launch as soon as next week, she said during a daily telebriefing with reporters.

The unidentified call center already has worked with other states to reduce or eliminate their backlogs, “and so they already have a proven track record,” Peek said.

A spike in cases has created a backlog in investigations, forcing the health district to prioritize which cases to contact by phone, Southern Nevada Health District senior investigator Devin Raman told the Las Vegas Review-Journal last week. The district also has an automated system that notifies individuals by text or email that they have tested positive and that requests that they submit information on their close contacts. The automated system has not been as effective in getting names of contacts to initiate contact tracing as a personal call from a disease investigator, according to the district.

The health district’s 64 investigators have been able to locate, notify and interview an estimated 2,000 people per week, Raman told the newspaper last week. With roughly 1,000 people on average now testing positive every day in Clark County, the health district in the past several weeks had developed a backlog of thousands of cases that had not received a personal phone call.

Contact Mary Hynes at mhynes@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0336. Follow @MaryHynes1 on Twitter.