CLAYTON, MO (KMOX) - St. Louis County has enough coronavirus contact tracers, but increasing caseloads and people refusing to cooperate, are making their job more difficult.
That's the word from Metropolitan Pandemic Task Force Incident Commander, Dr. Alex Garza. Garza says health officials tell him they're comfortable with the number of tracers they have now, but with the number of cases on the rise again, their workload is increasing exponentially.
"Early on, with the shelter in place," Garza says, "if there was a case then the contact tracers maybe had to go out and find two people. Now, on average it's about four to five people so right there you can see the doubling of the workload."
Another challenge in the near future, will be tracing cases confirmed in schools. Garza says to help the tracers, health departments are asking schools to keep a roster of who students will be around.
"Seating charts. Seating charts on the bus," Garza says. "All these other things so if a child does have a case of COVID they can pull these rosters and have a pretty quick picture on who they need to contact trace."
Paul Ziegler, CEO of Education Plus, an organization of 53 local school districts and six charter and private schools, says districts are working on scenarios that minimize contact.
"How can we create smaller groups within a school that don't necessarily interact with each other," he says. "Whether that's having lunch in a classroom or rather that's having your art teachers or some other elective teacher Zoom into a classroom instead of moving a class to a different room or to a teacher."