With substantial COVID-19 transmission rates in all 67 counties, the Pennsylvania Department of Health today shared its weekly update on Pennsylvania’s case investigation and contact tracing efforts, and again encouraged Pennsylvanians to download the COVID Alert PA app in order to help the commonwealth track cases.
“For [those] who receive a positive COVID-19 test, please remember to answer the call and for all others, please remain alert in case you are identified as a close contact and a contact tracer needs to reach you,” Secretary of Health Dr. Rachel Levine said Tuesday. “We must continue to do the right thing in order to mitigate the spread of this virus.”
If a Pennsylvania resident does not answer contact tracer or case investigators’ initial call to start the case investigation, the Department of Health leaves voicemails, texts, and sends a letter to the home requesting a callback. In the past week, 9 percent of cases reported — more than 4500 people — were successfully contacted by a public health professional statewide.
From December 27 to January 2, there were 1,528 contact tracing staff working with local and county health entities, partner organizations and the Regional Response Health Collaboration Program within the Department of Human Services, as well as volunteers from Co-County Wellness in Berks County and Penn Medicine Lancaster General Health. These staff monitored, in total, 5,862 contacts identified during the case investigations.
Since the implementation of the Contact Tracing Management System in early October, 56,300 of 73,800 contacts, or 76 percent of the total contacts identified, have been reached to communicate their quarantine status and offer ongoing symptom monitoring, the department reported.
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