DC mayor says city needs 900 contact tracers to track contacts of COVID-19 positive cases before reopening
WASHINGTON (FOX 5 DC) - Mayor Muriel Bowser says the District will need to build a team of approximately 900 contact tracers to track and monitor the contacts of COVID-19 positive individuals once the city moves into Phase 1 of its plan to reopen.
Bowser said currently the District has 65 contract tracers who have traced about 70 percent of the city's confirmed cases. Bowser said they are in the process of building a team of more than 200 contact tracers.
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DC Mayor says city needs 900 contact tracers to track contacts of COVID-19 positive cases before reopening
Mayor Muriel Bowser says the District will need to build a team of approximately 900 contact tracers to track and monitor the contacts of COVID-19 positive individuals once the city moves into Phase 1 of its plan to reopen.
A new testing site in Washington, D.C. opened Thursday as part of the city's plan to ramp up coronavirus screenings.
The public testing site at the UDC-CC Bertie Backus campus in Ward 5 will be open on Tuesdays and Thursdays for walk-thru and drive-thru services.
CORONAVIRUS IN DC, MARYLAND AND VIRGINIA
The tests will be administered by appointment only. In addition, the D.C. Health Department is expanding its criteria for testing to allow some asymptomatic individuals who believed they have been exposed and are in high-risk groups to be tested.
155 new positive coronavirus cases were announced in D.C. on Thursday bringing the District's total positive case count to 3,361. Bowser announced 12 additional COVID-19 related deaths bring the total to 139.