The rampant spread of COVID-19 is overwhelming some counties’ ability to effectively contact trace hundreds of new cases a day.
Sonoma County has 70 contact tracers with an average of 200 to 300 new cases reported each day through this winter surge.
"We could always use more contact tracers, given that we have a lot more contacts to trace and more cases to reach out to. I wouldn’t give up entirely on contact tracing," said the county’s health officer Dr. Sundari Mase. "But we are prioritizing outbreaks, vulnerable populations over those people that aren’t involved with large outbreaks or are younger or wouldn’t potentially have outcomes that we’re seeing in more vulnerable populations."
The county is also relying on some of its local hospitals to follow up and trace the contacts of their patients.
Dr. Mase said while contact tracing is important, the county’s focus is on getting people vaccinated.
"So I think that has to be a parallel effort. Because we realize that especially with the surge in cases that we’ve seen, that really the way forward is in getting people vaccinated."
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