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HUNTINGTON, W.Va. — As COVID-19 cases continue to surge across the state and personnel at local health departments remain the same, leaders at those facilities are being forced to scale back on contact tracing.
Public Health Officer Ayne Amjad described a significant change to contact tracing in communities, with local health departments now focusing on reaching out to immediate households. Previously, local healthcare workers reached out to a broader group of people in contact with a virus patient and recommend isolation.
Michael Kilkenny, Chief Executive Officer and Health Officer of Cabell-Huntington Health Department told MetroNews on Tuesday that his department is working to contact trace like before but admitted it’s “breaking down” due to the amount of community spread.
He said it’s important for residents to become educated on what to do as fewer tracing calls are being made.
“We’re going to be educating the public in what they should do and how they should conduct themselves so that they can stay safe and protect the people around them from spreading this while they are waiting for us to call,” Kilkenny said.
Kilkenny described contact tracing as a valuable tool when case numbers per day are low, for example around 25. He said calling would change the case count rapidly. However at Cabell County’s current rate of cases per day, around 125, he said the effectiveness plummets.
He said in any instance, if a person has been exposed to the virus and has symptoms, they should assume they have the virus. Kilkenny said it’s always best to play it safe.
“What you can do to protect the people around you is to treat yourself as if you have that while you’re waiting for results and to stay separated,” he said.
Kilkenny said he’s been watching the forecast in the county and this rate has exceeded projections. West Virginia leads the nation in that acceleration of new cases with 2.69 cases per 100,000 people per week per day, according to STAT, a national media company that investigates and reports on health, medicine and life sciences.
“It came up faster and staying more consistent day to day. It’s at the level of the last surge. We’re really seeing what we saw in December and January,” Kilkenny said.
Howard Gamble, the administrator of the Wheeling-Ohio County Health Department shared similar problems with contact tracing in his county. He told MetroNews that the tool is becoming “overwhelming” and it’s gotten “minimal at this office” with even himself making the calls.
Gamble said his office is better off focusing resources on vaccination and testing as COVID cases are reaching peaks of the pandemic in the Wheeling area.
“To contact trace every positive you have, with the volume you have, county health departments were never set up that way. Even with all the additional people you bring in, you have to remember we are trying to do multiple things,” Gamble said.
“I’ve diverted my team to where we think it is more important and that is to vaccinate the general public and testing.”
Gamble said contact tracing’s goal is to slow the next case enough to control the virus to a manageable state, not eliminate it. He said the best way to eliminate most of the threat of the virus is to get vaccinated.
“The biggest joy I get when I do contact tracing is when someone in the household says they’ve been vaccinated. Because at that moment, household contacts that have been vaccinated do not have to quarantine,” Gamble said.
Gamble also advocated for vaccinations and masks in schools, although Ohio County Schools does not have a mask mandate in place as of Tuesday. He said if the school system had a mandate in place for masks, contact tracing would be made easier and less children would be forced to miss classroom time if exposed to the virus.