![]() But as infections surge and counties are overwhelmed, state officials are not cracking down on them or telling them to improve their tracing. Under the Newsom administration’s orders, counties are required to investigate positive cases and then trace and notify their contacts when they reopen businesses. Then they request their phone numbers and emails, and advise them to get tested. Local contact tracers are like coronavirus detectives: They interview infected people to collect the names of friends, relatives and others who have been within six feet of them for more than 15 minutes. Halkitis said that while it’s polite for infected people to inform their own contacts, it cannot replace trained staffers notifying them. What Merced and Orange counties are doing “is by no means contact tracing,” said Perry Halkitis, dean of the School of Public Health at Rutgers University and the principal investigator for New Jersey’s contact tracing program Orange County also is telling most residents with the virus to warn their own contacts. Instead the county asks all sick people to tell their own friends and others that they’ve been exposed. One county, Merced, has the least amount of tracing: Since late June, its health department hasn’t notified contacts except the infected person’s workplaces and health care providers. Two counties, Kings and Mendocino, did not answer CalMatters’ questions about their contact tracing. Four are only notifying some contacts of infected people, such as the elderly or people with health conditions. Six of those seven counties aren’t interviewing all people with the virus, only those who are considered high-risk or recently tested positive. Collectively those counties have almost 100,000 residents infected with the coronavirus. ![]() But seven counties - Orange, Riverside, Contra Costa, Santa Cruz, San Joaquin, Sacramento and Yolo - said they are triaging their efforts because they have so many cases and testing lags behind.
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