Nevada loses contact tracers as contract expires

Nevada lost about 70 COVID-19 contact tracers this week to an expired contract, adding to the burden on local health authorities to alert people likely exposed to the novel coronavirus.

Hundreds of contact tracers remain on the job in Nevada despite the reduction. Coupled with new recommendations narrowing their duties, the contact tracing workforce remains adequate despite current high levels of COVID-19 spread, a top state health official said Wednesday.

“The local health departments feel confident that they’ll be able to maintain services,” Nevada Department of Health and Human Services deputy administrator Julia Peek said in a briefing call for reporters. “Most of the staffing will remain in place.”

Contact tracing is a crucial part of the public health response to an epidemic of an infectious disease like COVID-19. Workers are responsible for alerting the close contacts of an infected person that they may have been exposed and should self-quarantine.

As of this week, contact tracing had led to more than 45,000 new cases being identified in Nevada, Peek said. That’s about one-fifth of known cases in the state.

This week the state is losing contact tracers working through the professional services firm DeLoitte. Nevada signed a $28.4 million contract with the company in June, paid with federal CARES Act relief funds.

DeLoitte added 250 workers to the state’s contact tracer ranks. The company also established an automated text messaging system to assist the effort.

Deloitte’s workers made more than 260,000 calls to close contacts, Peek said. Their efforts focused on Clark and Washoe counties, as well as the Quad-County region in western Nevada.

This month, the state made new recommendations that contact tracers more narrowly focus their efforts to high-risk populations. As a result, fewer than 80 workers from Deloitte were working when the state’s contract with the company expired Wednesday.

Peek said hundreds of full-time and part-time contact tracers remain on the job, many of whom are students in the Nevada System of Higher Education. The state also is working with local health authorities to establish a new automated text messaging system.

Washoe County Health District officer Kevin Dick said his agency took over contact tracing from the state on Sunday. The agency has partnered with the University of Nevada, Reno, to handle the new work.

However, the bulk of the workers hired through UNR are assigned to disease investigation duties, a process that includes gathering the names of close contacts from infected people. Only two workers are assigned to contact tracing duties each day, he said.

Earlier this month, Southern Nevada Health District disease surveillance supervisor Kimberly Hertin said it would be difficult for her agency to take on contact tracing.

“We simply don’t have enough internal staffing to help,” Hertin said.

The health district is utilizing its own automatic notification system to reach close contacts by text message and email, agency spokeswoman Jennifer Sizemore said Wednesday. The same system was used before the state’s contract with Deloitte was in place.

“If the Health District does not have good contact information, staff is doing their best to notify as capacity allows,” Sizemore said.

Contact Michael Scott Davidson at sdavidson@reviewjournal.com or 702-477-3861. Follow @davidsonlvrj on Twitter.