NEW YORK (AP) – A “test and trace corps” of 2,500 will be in place by early June to identify people who have the virus, isolate them in hotel rooms if needed and determine whom they’ve had contact with, de Blasio said.
Join our WhatsApp groupSubscribe to our Daily Roundup Email
De Blasio said 7,000 people have already applied to join the effort, which will be coordinated with New York state’s contact tracing initiative.
The mayor promised that “you’re going to see the biggest testing and tracing initiative you’ve ever seen in this city, in this country before. It’s going to be fast, it’s going to be intense, it’s going to reach deeply into the city, it’s going to be lifesaving, unquestionably.”
The operation will be headed by Dr. Ted Long, a top official at New York City Health and Hospitals, the city’s public hospital system, rather than by the leadership of the city health department, which is usually in charge of public health initiatives.
The hospital system’s leaders are best suited to implement the contact tracing program because of their experience running a network of 11 hospitals, plus clinics around the city, de Blasio said.
“I am convinced this is the way we’ll get it done,” he said.
Applicants for contact tracing positions will be trained in a Johns Hopkins University program sponsored by former Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s Bloomberg Philanthropies, de Blasio said, and tech giant Salesforce will help set up a call center and data management system.
why is he wasting Taxpayers money on these “groups”? Use it to fund the people…………and stop asking for bailouts
Because contact tracing works: it is one of the reasons Israel is opening up quicker than we are (in addition to tighter border control).
Is this a joke? Tens of thousands of people infected I’m NYC maybe even in the hundreds of thousands.
At this point save some taxpayers dollars and just count on the herd immunity.
It’s a scam, follow the money trail, I was at a stadium while I had Covid-19, go trace then all
This is actually a great example of just how petty the Mayor is behaving.
He didn’t like what the City Department of Health was telling him so he moved contract tracing to Health+Hospitals. With all due respect to Dr. Long, he runs an ambulatory care network and nothing in his bio suggests that he is an epidemiologist.
He is hobbling one of the best local health departments in the country, if not the world, because he doesn’t like bad news or being disagreed with.