State workers trained as California contact tracers await assignment, even as counties struggle

Most California state workers trained to be COVID-19 “contact tracers” still haven’t started tracking down people exposed to the coronavirus, even as many counties say they don’t have enough staff to do the work.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom has frequently said state workers will be essential to the state’s contact tracing efforts. Earlier this year his administration notified many state workers they would be reassigned from their usual jobs to help counties track infections. He’s also repeatedly touted the fact that the state met its goal of training 10,000 contact tracers by July 1, which includes a mix of county and state workers.

As of last week, however, just over a third of the 3,600 state workers who were trained had been assigned to do that work, California Department of Public Health spokeswoman Ali Bay said. The assignment process is “ongoing” with more scheduled for this week, she said.

Some state workers completed their training months ago and are still waiting to be deployed.

In emails obtained by The Sacramento Bee, one state worker who completed his training in early May sent an email later that month saying he was still waiting for an assignment. Almost a month and a half later, an official with the California Department of Public Health responded saying workers were being assigned in phases based on need, but that there was no set schedule for when he might be used.

The worker, who declined to be named citing fear of repercussions at work, is among a handful of state workers who have told The Bee or posted on social media platforms Facebook and Reddit that they and their colleagues have been waiting a long time, in some cases months, to be assigned since completing their training.

In the meantime, counties throughout the state, from Sacramento to Orange County, say they don’t have enough contact tracers to call every person who tests positive for COVID-19 and their contacts within 24 hours, the standard recommended by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Sacramento was among the counties allowed to reopen more quickly.

In forms filed with the state in May, the county said its staff were able to contact trace each new case they found even though they didn’t meet the state’s staffing target. Instead, the county detailed a plan to call on county employees from various departments, nursing and public health students at local universities and medical reserve corps volunteers to add more if caseload increased.

But the recent explosion in coronavirus cases has overwhelmed Sacramento’s contact tracers, preventing them from thoroughly tracking each infection.

“It’s very troubling, given the importance of contact tracing and suppressing the virus,” state Sen. Steve Glazer, D-Orinda, said of the delay in deploying state-trained contact tracers.

Glazer, who has been critical of the administration’s response, sent a letter to Newsom on Thursday expressing concern about the need for more contact tracers.

“Your early commitment to training 10,000 contact tracers to augment county efforts was impressive. However, it appears that even that many tracers will not be sufficient,” he wrote. “As you know, without the resources to quickly track and notify those who have been exposed, our ability to control the spread of COVID-19 will be severely compromised.”

In his letter, Glazer poses more than a dozen questions for the administration about contact tracing, including “Where have the state-trained tracers been deployed?” and “What metrics are the state using to measure whether the level of tracing is sufficient to control the virus?”

He said he’s still waiting on a reply.

The state initially told counties they must have at least 15 contact tracers for every 100,000 residents before they could accelerate their reopening. But the Newsom administration allowed 17 counties to speed up their reopening without meeting that number, a Sacramento Bee review of county data found.

On Monday, California Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly said that those counties were allowed to reopen although they didn’t meet the standard because they had plans to staff up.

“We knew that we were building up our contact tracing program,” he said. “This was an opportunity to prepare around contact tracing.”

Moving forward, Newsom said his administration will continue to train more people to be contact tracers. He said it’s part of his plan to reopen schools safely, promising Monday to do “everything we can to make more robust the contact tracing efforts, particularly as it relates to school reopenings.”

This story was originally published July 21, 2020 at 5:00 AM with the headline "State workers trained as California contact tracers await assignment, even as counties struggle."