Coronavirus New Jersey: State To Hire 1,000 Contact Tracers, Will Provide 20,000 Tests A Day By End Of May
TRENTON, N.J. (CBS) — New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy provided more details for his roadmap to recovery on Tuesday. The focus is on expanding testing and contact tracing.
"So now we are putting our trust in you yet again to help us as we begin to get farther on that road back," Murphy said.
Murphy says every single resident helped to make the first of his six steps to recovery a reality.
Step one is dramatically slowing the spread of the virus. For the first day in six weeks, Murphy reported less than 1,000 new cases on Tuesday.
Other key metrics, like hospitalizations and ventilator use, also continue to decline.
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Step two is expanded testing. On Tuesday, Murphy announced the state is on track to do 20,000 tests per day by the end of May.
More private pharmacies like Rite Aid and CVS are expanding testing and the state plans to increase mobile test sites in urban areas, as well as working with houses of worship to offer testing.
"More testing means more people will know their health status and that means more peace of mind. And more testing creates more data, and more data allows us to take more steps forward," Murphy said.
In step three -- contact tracing -- health officials are planning to develop a community contact tracing corps by adding a least 1,000 trained individuals to the approximately 800 contact tracers who already work for local health departments.
They're also working on streamlining data sharing software.
"The ability to scale our contact tracing capacity is absolutely crucial," New Jersey Commissioner of Health Judith Persichilli said.
First, the state will partner with universities to bring on students studying public health. Then, they will ask for proposals from private vendors and organizations that can recruit private citizens who want to become contract tracers with an emphasis on multi-lingual individuals.
"The combination of expanded testing and contact tracing will increase our ability to quickly identify new cases and take immediate public health measures to interrupt the transmission of the virus," Persichilli said.
To further protect some of the most vulnerable New Jerseyans, the Department of Health announced that all long-term care facilities must test everyone who lives and works there by May 26.
