Sonoma County to hire local contact tracers

As Sonoma County moves closer to reopening more of its economy, public health officials are moving quickly to bolster the corps of workers who track the virus’s spread through the community while the number of new cases continues to rise.

Interactions with people known to have COVID-19, county officials said, are thought to be responsible for most of the county’s recent cases, a tally which grew by 96 between May 14 and Wednesday, the highest seven-day increase in cases since COVID-19 was first detected in the county on March 4.

To track the growing number of cases, the county is seeking to hire more workers to interview people who test positive and reach out to others they may have had contact with, work that is seen as pivotal to stemming local circulation of the contagion.

The county plans to hire 40 to 50 college students to perform contact tracing as part of its ramp-up toward reopening more types of businesses, according to a county spokesman. The work does not require any medical background, and the county also expects to receive some resources from the state to help, Public Health Officer Dr. Sundari Mase said.

Sonoma County needs to have at least 75 contact tracers to meet a state benchmark for need and currently has 75 to 80 contact tracers, according to a county spokesman.

The county’s plan is to have 150 trained contact-tracing staff by June 15 and 230 by July 15, which would exceed a state recommendation to have three times the minimum benchmark.