CHICAGO (WBBM NEWSRADIO) -- The Illinois Department of Public Health unveiled plans for its new contact tracing initiative to curb the community spread of coronavirus as a few public places open and more business join the essential group to open for curbside pickup under new guidelines from the governors' stay-at-home order that went into effect today.
Gov. Pritzker called the contact tracing plan a next step in the fight against COVID-19, a method that is also being implemented in other parts of the world where states and countries are opening.
"In order to move toward normalcy, the whole word must move toward contact tracing," Pritzker said at his daily press conference.
The model, which has been around since the 19th century, follows up with contacts who might have been exposed to someone with COVID-19.
IDPH's program, which is still in the works and hopes to be off the ground by the end of the month, plans to hire over 3,000 contract tracers to help monitor people who have been exposed to the virus, placing 30 workers per 100,000 residents in Chicago's communities.
Dr. Wayne Duffus, the acting state epidemiologist at IDPH leading the initiative, said tracers will fill three needed roles: case investigators will be responsible for reaching out to individuals who are have contracted the virus; contract tracers will be responsible for calling people who have been in close contact with someone who tested positive for the virus; and resource coordinators will provide individuals in quarantine with relevant resources to comply with the state's orders, such as where to get medication, how to get food delivered to their house or if they need alternate living situations to self-isolate.
Duffus said the state has already seen a large number of people interested in being contract tracers, who will range from reassigned workers at local health departments, skilled community members, social workers, students and recent grads and volunteers. He said training and hiring will depend on the skill level of each person and what they are assigned to do.
"This is how we break transmission and make sure we don't have a large outbreak ongoing," Duffus said.
But in order to make that a reality, he said communities need many trained workers. The IPDH is looking at tracing simulator models from Northwestern University, the University of Chicago and others as guides to help the program get off its feet.
While the exact number of employees needed is not set, he said using Pritzker's benchmark of 30,000 people per 100,000 residents is a "dial, not a switch" that can change as the state's cases go down and people keep practicing social distance guidelines.
Workers "not need to work all the time as cases go down (but they will be) strategically placed in regions most impacted by the pandemic," he said.
Pritzker said the plan could cost up to $80 million, though there is no budget set for the project yet.
The contact tracing initiative came as the state reported 3,137 new cases and 105 coronavirus deaths. The new cases mark the single-day highest total of new cases. That takes the state's overall known cases to 56,055 cases, including 2,457 deaths.
