Miami-Dade will add 250 more contact tracers for COVID-19 to combat surge of cases
Florida’s hardest hit county will add 250 contact tracers to help contain the surge of COVID-19 cases that have spread rapidly in Miami-Dade County — augmenting a staff of disease investigators struggling to keep up with the runaway pace of new infections.
The agreement was announced Thursday morning after two months of negotiations between Miami-Dade leaders and Florida’s health department over the number of additional COVID-19 contact tracers needed for the county and who would pay for it.
In a press release, Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez said the county will use $14 million in federal grants received through the CARES Act to fund the additional workforce. The contact tracers will be hired by Maximus, a Virginia-based contractor, and they’re scheduled to begin working in Miami-Dade as soon as possible, according to the agreement.
“I’m very happy today that we are moving forward,” Gimenez said in the press release.
Miami-Dade has the state’s highest number of COVID-19 cases, with a total of 55,961 confirmed infections to date. The county has averaged 1,868 new cases a day over the past two weeks — a surge that has overwhelmed the 300 contact tracers now working in the county.
On Thursday morning, the health department confirmed an additional 1,987 new COVID-19 cases in Miami-Dade and a positive rate of 26.2% of all tests received Wednesday.
County officials also plan to launch a voluntary “Community Empowerment Program” through an app designed to help residents track virus hot spots and avoid potential infection, Gimenez said. He said more details would be provided soon.
Miami-Dade expects to spend about $474 million in CARES Act funds for its response to COVID-19, including about $40 million for contact tracing and testing, according to a presentation to county commissioners on Wednesday. The CARES Act is the coronavirus relief bill passed by Congress in March that’s intended to address economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic.
The signed agreement between the health department and Miami-Dade says the contact tracers will undergo criminal background checks. The worksite is listed as Reston, Virginia. But the contract also states that Florida residents familiar with the state’s geography are preferred.
Florida’s health department will pay Maximus at least $33.6 million — from the federal money — to provide contact tracers throughout the state, according to purchase orders published by the state’s Department of Financial Services. The first purchase order, for $6.2 million was signed on May 28. A second purchase order was signed on July 1 for $27.4 million.
State and county officials signed the agreement Thursday morning after Gov. Ron DeSantis said in Miami on Tuesday that he has approved $138 million for contact tracing and other response efforts. Gimenez, who had been asking for more contact tracers for Miami-Dade since May, said at the time that he would defer to the state to expand contact tracing in the county.
Contact tracers are considered by public health experts to be essential to stamping out infectious disease outbreaks — reaching out to those who test positive, tracking down their contacts and connecting those people to services. They also monitor people under quarantine.
In order to effectively trace COVID-19 cases, Miami-Dade would need 10,695 contact tracers, or about 387 tracers for every 100,000 residents, according to the Mullan Institute at George Washington University, which publishes a contact tracing workforce estimator. The calculation is based on Miami-Dade averaging 1,625 new cases a day. In the past two weeks, though, the county has averaged even more than that — 1,725 new cases a day, according to the state’s latest county level report.
For all of Florida, the health department would need 48,439 contact tracers to conduct interviews, notify people and follow up with known cases, according to the George Washington University estimator.
The health department confirmed 9,989 additional cases of COVID-19 on Wednesday, the fourth highest single-day total recorded since the pandemic began in March.
The state now has 232,718 confirmed cases since the pandemic began. Miami-Dade County has 55,961 confirmed cases and 1,092 deaths, the highest in the state.
This story was originally published July 9, 2020 at 10:05 AM.
