44 THE QUEENS COURIER • HEALTH • MAY 7, 2020 FOR BREAKING NEWS VISIT WWW.QNS.COM
health
Cuomo, Bloomberg partner up on
coronavirus contact tracing program
BY ALEJANDRA O’CONNELLDOMENECH
REUTERS/Paresh Dave
Meng leads call to ensure mental health resources for healthcare workers
BY CARLOTTA MOHAMED
cmohamed@schnepsmedia.com
@QNS
Congresswoman Grace Meng led members of the New
York Congressional Delegation are calling on President
Donald Trump to include mental health resources in the
next coronavirus relief package for frontline healthcare
workers responding to the COVID-19 pandemic.
In a letter sent to the president on April 29 — signed by
15 New York House members and state Senators Charles
Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand — the lawmakers urged
that the CARES 2.0 package contain signifi cant funding
to support the emotional well-being of healthcare workers
serving on the frontlines, so that they in turn can
remain healthy for their patients.
Th e CARES 2.0 package is the proposed follow-up
bill to the fi rst CARES (Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and
Economic Security) Act, which was passed by Congress
and signed into law last month.
“Th e emotional and psychological burden placed upon
these workers can even outweigh the physical burden,”
the lawmakers said in the letter. “Furthermore, the longterm
impacts on mental health is yet to be determined.
As such, securing the emotional well-being and resilience
of our frontline workers will be critical to facing
the coronavirus and bolstering the ranks of our healthcare
workforce.”
Th e lawmakers are requesting that any subsequent
coronavirus relief packages accomplish the following:
Include signifi cant funding to assess and treat the mental
health of COVID-19 frontline health care workers
and their immediate family members. In the event of the
health care worker’s death, ensure the immediate surviving
family members continue to receive treatment.
Ensure the cost of such mental health treatment is fully
covered, and at no expense of the individuals. Provide
funding to hospitals to deploy mental health professionals
and clinicians to provide on-site mental health care
and resources. Expand telemedicine services to health
care workers and their families. Establish an HHSadministered
COVID-19 crisis hotline for impacted
health care workers, their families and the general public.
Include funding to the Substance Abuse and Mental
Health Services Administration, the Health Resources
and Services Administration, and the Department of
Labor to provide grants to agencies in order to hire more
workers Meng also led an identical letter that she and
the New York House members sent to House and Senate
leaders, as New York remains the epicenter of the coronavirus
outbreak with over 300,000 confi rmed cases and
over 18,000 deaths.
Th e congresswoman and her colleagues have heard
directly from frontline healthcare workers about the
“harrowing, horrifi c and heartbreaking anecdotes” of the
conditions inside New York Hospitals, she said.
“Our brave frontline healthcare workers have been our
heroes throughout this pandemic,” Meng said. “Th ey
have made enormous and selfl ess sacrifi ces, putting their
safety on the line to care for patients and save lives. But
the stress and anxiety from the exhaustive work they
do — treating daily fl oods of coronavirus patients, high
COVID-19 death rates, fear over lack of PPE, long hours
and separation from loved ones — is taking a huge emotional
toll on many of these professionals.”
According to Judy Sheridan-Gonzalez, RN, president
of the New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA), they
held a virtual memorial service for 25 deceased nurses
that died of coronavirus. In the course of the service, they
received news of the 26th death.
“Healthcare workers handling the death and dying in
astronomical numbers, while fearing for their own health
and safety, are suff ering deep emotional scarring. Th is
week’s tragic news of the suicide of one of our physician
colleagues, is further evidence of the impact of this pandemic,”
Sheridan-Gonzalez said. “Our frontline workers
are the new ‘veterans’ who will suff er PTSD from their
work in the war against the coronavirus and must receive
preventive and supportive mental health services.”
adomenech@qns.com
@QNS
Working with two other states and
the former mayor of New York City, the
Empire State is launching a new pilot
program aimed at tracing the contacts
of people who contract coronavirus,
Governor Andrew Cuomo announced
Th ursday.
“We know increasing our testing capacity
is the key to re-opening New York,
and the second step aft er testing is tracing
to fi nd out who tested positive, who
they contacted and then isolate those
people so you don’t increase the rate of
infection,” Cuomo said during his daily
novel coronavirus briefi ng in Albany,
where he was joined remotely by Mayor
Bill de Blasio and former Mayor Michael
Bloomberg.
“Tracing is not hard on an individual
basis — the problem is the massive
scale and with an operation that has
never existed before.” Bloomberg said
that the City University of New York
and the State University of New York
would help fi nd potential applicants for
the contract tracer jobs and that Johns
Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public
Health would help recruit, interview and
train contract tracers with an online curriculum.
“One of the most important steps to
take to re-open the economy as safely
as possible is to create a system of contact
tracing,” Bloomberg said. “When
social distancing is relaxed, contact tracing
is our best hope for isolating the
virus when it appears — and keeping it
isolated.”
Th ere will be at least 30 contact
tracers for every 100,000 people,
according to the governor’s
offi ce. Th e program is expected
to have 6,400 to 17,000 tracers
statewide depending on
the projected number of
cases.
Contact tracing
will help mitigate
the spread of the
novel coronavirus
in
four steps,
according
to the gove
r n o r ’ s
offi ce.
F i r s t ,
labs will
report
positive cases of the virus to contact tracers
every day. Th e contact tracer will then
interview the positive patient to identify
people they may have been in contact
with over the past 14 days. Th e contact
tracer will then notify and interview
each contact to alert them to their risk
of infection and instruct those contacts
to quarantine or isolate for 14 days to be
sure they don’t spread the novel coronavirus
to others.
Tracers will then monitor contacts by
text throughout the duration of their
quarantine or isolation to see if the contacts
are showing any symptoms. Cuomo
said the program will operate through
the next fl u season and be implemented
in coordination with New Jersey and
Connecticut.
Th e current New York City mayor, Bill
de Blasio, said he’s supportive of the tracing
program, and the city’s eager to participate.
“Contact tracing, the test and trace
approach, is going to change everything,”
de Blasio said. “New York City is hiring
1,000 contact tracers with a healthcare
background to super charge this eff ort.
I think we are going to be able to show
this country a model that’s going to be
extraordinarily eff ective in beating back
this disease.”
Photo via Getty Images
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