Experts Call on Congress to Increase Funding for Contact Tracing Efforts

A nonpartisan group of healthcare policy experts has called on federal lawmakers to increase funding to the states as efforts to implement contact tracing strategies continue to ramp up nationwide. Comprised of a large roster of former health officials and industry leaders, the United States of Care says its mission is “to ensure that every single American has access to quality, affordable health care regardless of health status, social need, or income.” In a May 8 report published to its website, USoC highlighted the limited resources of many states to scale up contact tracing efforts in the fight against the spread of Covid-19. In an April 27 letter addressed to U.S. House and Senate leadership, USoC estimated that the nation requires 180,000 additional contact tracers at a cost of about $12 billion. The letters say that these totals were calculated by considering per-case workloads in the setting of a gradual decline in case incidence.

Aggressive contact tracing has featured prominently in the successful Covid-19 control strategies of nations such as South Korea, which reported just 259 deaths as of May 13 and an incidence rate of 21.38 per 100,000 people, according to Johns Hopkins. In addition to installing testing kiosks across the country, South Korea deployed the use of cell phone and credit card data to trace citizen exposure. The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control recommends phone-based tracking as part of a concerted contact tracing strategy to also include the adaptation of existing phone banks, streamlined workflow plans, and the use of software to contact patients.

Although widespread, the utility of automated interventions like cell phone apps to boost Covid-19 tracing efforts remains unclear. Teasing out the impacts of strategy components that are implemented together can be difficult. Further, tech-based tracing efforts may not be readily embraced, particularly by highly vulnerable citizens such as seniors. Even with substantial public participation, Iceland reported that its Covid-19 tracing app has been of little use unless combined with human tracing efforts, Business Insider reported. Former FDA chief Tom Frieden has echoed this discovery, telling Wired that “you’ll read a lot of misguided stuff on Twitter and elsewhere about ‘This is what Asia did.’ It’s not true. China has done traditional contact tracing on 730,000 people.”

Sources:
https://unitedstatesofcare.org/covid-19/covid-19-contact-tracing/
https://apps.npr.org/documents/document.html?id=6877567-Bipartisan-Public-Health-Leaders-Letter-on
https://www.wired.com/story/health-officials-no-thanks-contact-tracing-tech/ 
https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/publications-data/contact-tracing-covid-19-evidence-scale-up-assessment-resources
https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html
https://www.businessinsider.com/iceland-contact-tracing-not-gamechanger-2020-5
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/05/how-south-korea-prevented-coronavirus-disaster-why-battle-is-not-over/#close

Katie Pincura, DrPh, MPH, MA

Katie Pincura, DrPH, MA, MPH is an Assistant Professor, Teaching Assistant Professor of Health Sciences at Western Carolina University, College of Health and Human Sciences, School of Health Sciences. Dr. Pincura is a graduate of Georgia Southern University. Her research focuses on the intersection of healthcare policy and public health.

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