This effort to contain Covid is "broken", say experts
The tracing of contacts should be a useful tool, but it is faced with many problems to be effective.
Throughout the pandemic, infectious disease experts defended a multi-faceted approach toCurking coronavirus. Tests, contact tracing, closures and personal responsibility are part of the stopping of propagation, in addition to studying disease and developing treatments and vaccines. But a recentNew York TimesThe article reveals why a particular element of this countryReply to Covid has been so ineffective.The US contact tracing program can not bring cases of coronaviruses downMany experts have recounted the publication.
"I think it's easy to say that contact tracing is broken,"Carolyn CannuscioAssociate Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, saidTheTimes. "It is broken because so many parts of our prevention system are broken."
As the publication indicates,Trace narrow contacts Infected people is a disease containment strategy that has been part of centuries, well before smartphone applications and Internet connections. (A version of this one was even used in the 16th centuryBubonic plague control, according to an academic document published on the conversation.) The disease and prevention centers (CDC) officiallyDefines close contact as a person who is closer to 6 feet to a person with coronaviruses for 15 minutes or more (although they have recently clarified to note that an eternal or a cough that occurs in a five-minute interaction could of course tooto make you susceptible)
Yet, contact tracing has not had a lot of impact on reducing the propagation of coronavirus in the United States, because of several issues, including inadequate training, public resistance, test delays, number cases and certain aspects of the virus and certain aspects of the virus. He himself.
In its most effective form, the follow-up of contracts makes it possible to take close contacts of an infected person to take steps to reduce their exposure to others, limiting the number of people they can infect, in case they also contracted the disease. But in parts of the country, theQuantity of positive tests Results are simply overwhelming the tracing teams of the state contract. NBC5 in Texas, for example, published a report earlier this week citing George Washington research, which believes that the state would need 10 times their current.Quantity of contact tracers Follow their case load.
And the test challenges do not make contact with favors traces. (Many laboratory providers have seen thewait for the results climb to a week or more.) "It's a race against time," Deputy Secretary of Maryland for Public HealthFran Phillips, Rn, saysThe Times."And if we lost days and days of the infectious period because we did not get laboratory recovery, it really diminishes our ability to do contact tracing."
In addition, Covid is a particularly difficult disease to reduce the traceability of the contract because it does not always realize immediately known. Many patients can have several days pass between the exhibition and the appearance of symptoms, and about40% of cases are asymptomatic entirely. Add to that a reluctance among part of the population to cooperate with tracers, as well as tracers working with incorrect or incomplete contact information - and many cases of COVID-19 across the country are not addressed.
RELATED:For more information up to date, sign up for our daily newsletter.
For this reason, some experts recommend reducing contact from contact and putting these resources in other containment methods, which could have more potential for business at the moment. Former Commissioner for Texas HealthDavid Lakey RecountTheTimes,"Contact tracing is the wrong tool for bad work at the wrong time" and former head of disease control and prevention centers (CDC)Tom FriedenSays: "At one point, when your cases are very high, you must put your test and your contact tracing. We can be in this situation in some parts of the country today." And for more locations where Covid-19 takes again, checkThe Covid epidemic is "evolves" in these states, says the White House .