The failure to stage the tracing workforce harks back to U.S. officials’ inability to build up adequate testing in the early days of the pandemic.
By Dan Goldberg and Alice Miranda Ollstein
Severe shortages of public health workers to track disease spread helped fuel coronavirus spikes in states like Florida, Texas and Arizona and could make it harder to stamp out new hot spots.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has about 10 percent of the 15,000 workers needed to contain the outbreak in his state, according to one widely cited simulator and plans to hire just 600 more. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has 3,000 of the 4,000 tracers he said he wanted to hire in late April. And Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey called up 300 National Guard members to fill the surveillance gap, more than a month after he lifted his stay-at-home order.
The failure to stage the tracing workforce harks back to U.S. officials’ inability to build up adequate testing in the early days of the pandemic and is increasing the likelihood that states will be forced to shut down their economies again to stop serious disease spread. Read more >>