© 2024 WSHU
NPR News & Classical Music
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
We received reports that some iPhone users with the latest version of iOS (v17.4) cannot play audio via the Grove Persistent Player.
While we work to fix the issue, we recommend downloading the WSHU app.
Stories and information in our region on the COVID-19 pandemic.

Bloomberg To Head N.Y.'s Contact Tracing Program To Help Contain Virus Spread

Mike Groll
/
AP
Then New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo in Albany, N.Y., in 2012. Bloomberg will help create a "tracing army" that will help find people infected with the coronavirus and get them into isolation, Cuomo announced Wednesday.

Governor Andrew Cuomo says former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has offered to take over the complex and labor intensive process of contact tracing after someone becomes sick with coronavirus, and is putting up $10.5 million to help do so.

Cuomo and health experts believe that contact tracing will be very important during a predicted second wave or even a third wave of the virus. Along with more widespread testing of those who are experiencing symptoms, the method can help isolate those who are at risk of becoming sick or spreading the virus, without having to shut down the entire economy.

The governor says details still need to be worked out. He says no one has ever attempted contact tracing on such a large scale, and calls it a “monumental effort” that will also involve coordination with New York City and its suburbs, upstate regions, and neighboring states, including New Jersey and Connecticut.

“We have to expand this number tenfold, and we have to get it done, like this,” Cuomo said, snapping his fingers for emphasis. “You don’t have months to plan and do this. You have weeks to get this up and running.”

Cuomo’s Chief of Staff Melissa DeRosa, says Bloomberg won’t be doing it all alone. He’ll be working with Johns Hopkins University’s public health program, of which Bloomberg is a major funder, and which issues the definitive map of coronavirus cases worldwide.  

“They, in partnership with us, are creating an online curriculum to train the tracers, to recruit them, to interview them and to perform the background checks,” DeRosa said.  

The state will also be recruiting people to work as tracers through existing health department staff, investigators who work at state agencies and medical students at State and City University of New York medical schools.

Cuomo says he hopes, if successful, it can serve as a model for other states.

"We're all eager to begin loosening restrictions on our daily lives and our economy. But in order to do that as safely as possible, we first have to put in place systems to identify people who may have been exposed to the virus and support them as they isolate," Bloomberg, said in a statement.

State health officials have been trying to get more data about the rate of infection that’s already occurred among New Yorkers, and have been conducting random tests at grocery stores around the state to see if shoppers might have the antibodies in their blood to show that they already contracted the virus and recovered. Cuomo says it’s the largest study in the country, and will hopefully put to rest speculation on what has been the actual spread of the disease in the U.S. so far.  

“What percent of the population has been infected? Nobody knows,” Cuomo said. “Nobody knows the facts.”

The results will not be known for several more days.

Read the latest on WSHU’s coronavirus coverage here.

Do you have questions you’d like WSHU to answer in local coverage of the coronavirus? Let us know via this survey.

Karen has covered state government and politics for New York State Public Radio, a network of 10 New York and Connecticut stations, since 1990. She is also a regular contributor to the statewide public television program about New York State government, New York Now. She appears on the reporter’s roundtable segment, and interviews newsmakers.
Related Content