Pennsylvania to hire civilians to ramp up coronavirus contact tracing

Pennsylvania will hire civilians to bolster contact tracing across the state in an effort to better contain and mitigate the coronavirus, Gov. Tom Wolf announced Wednesday.

The group, called the Commonwealth Civilian Coronavirus Corps, “will reduce our unemployment rate while making a lasting health and economic contribution to our Commonwealth,” Wolf said during a virtual news conference.

“By maximizing our testing and contact tracing capacities, we can contain covid-19 without widely freezing the movement of Pennsylvanians,” he said.

He said the top priority for the past two months — Pennsylvania saw its first positive cases of covid-19 March 6 — has been on public health and safety. While that remains the No. 1 priority, he said, there is a need to look to the future and the continued gradual reopening of society.

“We’re walking a tightrope between health and economy,” he said, though he gave few details on the plan and indicated specifics would come later.

“We do not want to spend the next few months or next year cloistered inside our homes,” he said. “We want to be able to resume working, going to school, going to church and visiting our loved ones. We want to reopen businesses of all types — and we want to be able to do this with as little risk as possible.”

He said the contact tracing work will help the state monitor and respond to new coronavirus cases. State Department of Health officials previously have said contact tracing will include tracking down and notifying any close contacts the patient had and asking them to quarantine for 14 days.

Some work of the newly formed group will include:

• Partnering with local public health agencies, community organizations and the nonprofit community to expand Pennsylvania’s existing testing and contact tracing initiatives.

• Leveraging additional resources to fund testing and contact tracing initiatives.

• Exploring creative ways to recruit experienced Pennsylvanians with health care and public health experience to support the initiative.

• Coordinating existing resources deployed by the state, including community health nurses and county health departments that are conducting testing and contact tracing throughout the state.

Wolf said last week contact tracing played a significant role in why Southwestern Pennsylvania was not among the 24 counties slated to move into the yellow phase of the state’s tiered reopening plan Friday.

“That takes people. It takes infrastructure. We’re somewhat limited by what we can do to help,” he said Friday. “To the extent that folks in the Southwest can help in this process, we can go faster rather than slower.”

In New York, Gov. Andrew Cuomo called for creating a “tracing army,” and former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg and his foundation are aiding the state’s effort. That force could number from 4,000 or 5,000, to start.

New York City, which has its own disease detectives, could expand to 5,000 or even 10,000 tracers, officials said.

Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald on Wednesday applauded the idea of the civilian contact tracing corps.

“I think it’s a really good idea,” he said, noting the effort will put people to work while helping to keep the numbers of new cases where they are and allowing the economy to reopen.

Wolf did not say how many people will be hired or how much they will be paid.

Wolf said efforts to recruit residents for contact tracing will involve:

• Engaging partners to build and strengthen a public health workforce across the state;

• Recruiting, training and connecting the workforce with employment opportunities; and

• Engaging public health and health care employers to connect trained workers with long-term career opportunities.

The Associated Press contributed.