The Green River District Health Department said more employees are needed to keep up with an increased demand in contact tracing. Director Clay Horton said the department needs another 15-25 people for the seven-county district, and about half of those are needed in Daviess County.
Contact tracing is the process of identifying people who may have come into contact with an COVID-19 patient and collecting information about them.
The GRDHD performs contact tracing on every individual who tests positive for COVID-19.
As of Friday afternoon, 386 people have tested positive for the virus across the Green River District.
“We are going to need more contact tracers, and I’m hoping to be able to announce pretty soon how that’s going to happen and how that’s going to work,” Horton said.
The GRDHD is working closely with the Kentucky Department of Public Health and Gov. Andy Beshear’s office in planning for increased need for tracers as testing continues to ramp up. Horton said a meeting between Beshear and the local health departments was scheduled for next week.
Horton said it’s possible some of those contact tracers will be employed by the Health Department. Regional “strike teams” may also be deployed to help.
“They can move to areas where hotspots develop because there might not be a desire to have a lot of contact tracers housed in areas of the state where they’re not having a lot of cases at that time,” he said.
Currently, the health department only has half the number of tracers needed, but Horton said they were continuing to get the job done.
That has meant long hours, no breaks, and no days off.
“We are pushing toward a place where we can manage this on an ongoing basis, and we can get things to looking normal,” he said. “Part of that means we’re going to have to do more testing and contact tracing.”
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