The state — and schools — are getting back into the business of contact tracing.
As vaccinations were ramping up and case counts were beginning to fall, the state in May turned over the bulk of its contact tracing work to AM Trace, a private company based out of Leesburg, Virginia.
The state is keeping its contract with the company. But amid a surge in cases, the Health Department is also hiring an additional 25 in-house contact tracers, most re-assigned from within its ranks. (At the height of the pandemic, the state had close to 200 contact tracers on hand, many of whom were health department employees, in addition to National Guard members and temporary hires.)
The state has agreed to pay AM Trace $50 for every contact tracer on duty, for every hour worked, up to $10 million, according to the terms of its contract. It’s already paid the company $2 million through July.
But while cases have piled up, so have complaints. The state fields questions from one to five people affected by cases on a near-daily basis, many anxious to make sure the state knows about their status.
“Anecdotally, the majority were from people expressing concern or had questions about the time it was taking to hear from one of the contact tracers following receipt of a positive Covid-19 test result,” Ben Truman, a spokesperson for the Vermont Health Department, wrote in an email.
Still, Truman noted that the state is recording more than 100 cases every day and suggested complaints might reflect a minority of experiences.
“Keeping in mind that any given case has about three or more close contacts, this may be useful for context of the denominator that would reflect relative percentages of complaints received as well as the scope of effort the Delta-driven surge is requiring,” he said.
AM Trace did not respond to an email and phone call seeking comment.
Officials involved with recent outbreaks at a child care center and summer camp earlier complained that contact tracing efforts were sluggish. Multiple school leaders who ran summer programming have also since reported the same.
“It was hard to get a call back,” said Jeanne Collins, the superintendent in the Rutland Northeast Supervisory Union. She added that there appeared to be quite a bit of confusion about who should be considered a close contact or not.
In the St. Johnsbury school district, Covid-19 coordinator and school nurse Louisa Driscoll said the out-of-state contractor got the school mixed up with St. Johnsbury Academy, a local private school, and missed cases based out of New Hampshire.
Delays were also a problem. The state had earlier established a standard that those considered close contacts would hear from contact tracers within 48 hours. So when one family did not hear from anyone for two days, they figured they were in the clear and could resume normal activities, Driscoll said, including sending their kid back to child care. They later got a call.
“That was really upsetting to the child care center, obviously,” Driscoll said.
Schools were told late last week by the Agency of Education that, effective immediately, they would once again be taking over the bulk of the contact tracing work for cases within their buildings. Educators were initially deputized into contact tracing work in late fall, when the state was dealing with a surge of cases.
“It’s a big workload,” Driscoll said. “So, you know, I’m not looking forward to that. But it will feel better to have the contact tracing within our control, and that’s what our parents have come to expect.”
