12 LONGISLANDPRESS.COM • JUNE 2020
COVER FEATURE
HOW AN ARMY OF DISEASE
BY TIMOTHY BOLGER
Midway through the Super Bowl LIV
pregame show the phone rang with an
urgent message: A plane with passengers
from China possibly exposed to
coronavirus was about to land at John
F. Kennedy International Airport.
Answering the Feb. 2 call was Dr. Lawrence
Eisenstein, the Nassau County
health commissioner, who quickly
dispatched his team of contact tracers
— disease detectives who track down
who may have been exposed to someone
with an infectious disease — to meet the
passengers at the airport and put them
in precautionary quarantine before
they traveled to Long Island. Four
months later, after the virus peaked in
“We’re not the police, we’re simply trying to
prevent the spread of disease,”
says Dr. Lawrence Eisenstein
New York, hiring thousands more such
investigators across Nassau and Suffolk
counties to handle the increased caseload
was a crucial benchmark that had
to be met before the region could begin
reopening from the coronavirus shutdown.
But the work itself is not new.
“People keep referring to this all starting
back in March,” Dr. Eisenstein tells
the Press, recalling the first confirmed
case in New York State on March 1. “Not
for us it didn’t.”
Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced in
April a partnership with former New
York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s
philanthropic organization and Johns
Hopkins University to hire about 17,000
contact tracers statewide. Besides ensuring
hospital bed space and lowering
the COVID-19 hospitalization and death
rates, one of the key seven metrics for
regions to reopen was hiring 30 contact
tracers per 100,000 residents.
Nassau officials said they had
about 750 contact tracers
as of May 26, the day
before the region
hit phase one
of reopeni
n g ,
meaning
the resumption of construction,
manufacturing, agriculture, wholesaling,
and curbside retail. Suffolk hired
nearly 1,400.
“Typically before COVID … we have
seven nurses that investigate diseases,”
says Lauren Culver Barlow, bureau
chief of Epidemiology and Disease Control
of the Suffolk County Department
of Health Services. “Certain diseases
are important to investigate rather
quickly.”
THE COVID BEAT
From AIDS to Zika, there are
nearly 100 diseases that the
state Department of Health and
U.S. Centers for Disease Control
mandate contact
tracers probe on LI
and statewide.
CommCare, the new
software that the
state has deployed
for the coronavirus
army of contact
tracers, was operational
in late
May, officials
said. While
tech giants
Google and
A p p l e
h a v e
drawn
headlines
for creating coronavirus tracking
apps, the work of local contact tracers
is largely old-school gumshoe work,
albeit often over the phone while the
investigators telecommute.
“Generally. we don’t go knocking on
doors,” Barlow says. “Mostly we work
by phone and computer.”
Once a contact tracer receives a report of
a person testing positive for coronavirus,
the first thing to do is check the date the
patient first reported feeling symptoms.
Then they’ll reach out to the patient to
find out who the person has been around
two days prior to that date, which is the
period when patients are believed to be
contagious. Disease detectives usually
need to speak with patients’ household
members, work contacts, friends,
and anyone else the patient
may have crossed paths
with.
“We track down anyone
in touch with that person
two days prior to symptom
onset and put them
in 14-day precautionary
quarantine,” Barlow
says. “Then we check in
daily to see how they’re
doing. If they have no
symptoms in 14 days,
the quarantine period
is lifted.”
Contact tracing can
require the bedside
manner of a
good doctor
and the
sharp mind
of a police
detective.
“It’s a good idea
to have some good
communication skills
so the people feel
comfortable
giving you
the information,”
Barlow
says.
Some people, such
as undocumented
immigrants who
fear being deported,
are afraid to speak
to a contact tracer.
That can prove a difficult
hurdle to overcome in
places such as Brentwood, for example.
The largely Hispanic community is the
hardest hit on LI and
home to 10 percent of
Suffolk’s cases.
Contact tracers are tasked with
ensuring COVID-19 patients don’t
spread the virus. (Getty Images)
/LONGISLANDPRESS.COM
