Contact Tracing
If you are
called by a contact tracer, we need you to answer the phone so we
can let you know about the risk to you and your family and provide you with
information to protect your loved ones and your community.
If you have
received a call from a contact tracer and need to contact them, call
856-457-3502.
You will be
asked to share your close contacts. That information is used ONLY for the
purpose of helping those people to get tested or to quarantine. Your
information is confidential. Your name will not be released to your contacts or
your COVID-19 status – that information will only be known to public health
officials and our local health department partners, if needed.
Together,
we can save lives and stop the spread of COVID-19.
As testing
of individuals for COVID-19 increases, so does the need for contact tracers to
conduct interviews with individuals who may have come into contact with those
who tested positive. It is estimated that at least 1,000 and as many as 5,000
contact tracers may be needed in New Jersey.
To meet
this need and expand on the existing group of 800-900 contact tracers, the State
is developing a Community Contact Tracing Corps with a two-stage approach:
1.
Partnering with the
State's higher education institutions to train public health graduate students
and alumni to engage in contact tracing activities in their home communities.
In partnership with Rutgers University, led by their School of Public Health
and including the School of Health Professions, School of Nursing, School of
Social Work, and Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology, we
will launch the corps and create several hundred jobs. We will also be
expanding the effort to include other colleges and universities throughout the
state.
2.
In June, the State
issued a Request for Quotes (RFQ) to solicit proposals from vendors, organizations,
and institutions to help expand the Corps across the state. In late July,
Public Consulting Group (PCG) was chosen to recruit, employ, and manage contact
tracers who can be deployed to areas with increasing COVID-19 cases. PCG will
work to ensure that as many of these new contact tracers as possible come from
and reflect the diversity of the communities they will be working in. All
individuals will be required to complete the Contact Tracing training developed
with Rutgers School of Public Health.
As of
December 21, there are nearly 3,500 contact tracers working in the state,
including existing local health department staff as well as newly trained
contact tracers deployed locally. The State's newest contact tracers come from
every one of our 21 counties and speak nearly two-dozen languages.
For more on
where contact tracers are working and the latest information on their efforts,
visit the Department of Health's COVID-19 dashboard.
Collecting
information in a uniform way makes it easier for health officials to share
information and to track the virus across New Jersey. When time is of the
essence, we cannot lose any of it trying to work across different platforms. It
will also ensure connectivity with contact tracers with our neighbors,
including New York State and Philadelphia.
No one
outside of our contact-tracing program will have access to CommCare, and all
information is off-loaded after 45 days to the state's epidemiological
database.
Above all,
you are the key to our ability to stop the spread of COVID-19.