The Maine Department of Education has activated a team of 21 nurses to get in touch with the close contacts of school staff and students who test positive for the coronavirus, adding to the capacity of an overwhelmed state corps of disease investigators.
The team, largely made up of retired school nurses, will notify those identified as close contacts of those who test positive for COVID-19 so they know to quarantine because of their exposure to the virus, monitor their symptoms and potentially get tested. Over the past 30 days, Maine schools have seen 259 students and employees test positive for the coronavirus, forcing many schools to temporarily close or ask large groups of students and staff to quarantine.
The announcement, made Tuesday, comes as the corp of contact tracers and disease investigators at the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention are having trouble keeping up with the surging number of cases in Maine.
Maine CDC Director Nirav Shah said Monday that state contact tracers would contact newly infected people just once from now on during the course of their recovery, rather than stay in touch throughout their quarantine periods. And last week, the CDC said case investigators would stop trying to track down the origins of suspected COVID-19 cases before they’ve been confirmed by tests. The agency also said it might no longer be able to reach those who have tested positive within 24 hours of their test result to collect a list of their close contacts and coach them through the recovery period.
Contact tracers are a part of public health authorities’ strategy to contain the spread of the virus. They notify those who have been in close contact with someone who’s been infected so they know to quarantine and avoid potentially spreading the virus to others. The Maine CDC has added to its staff of contact tracers in recent weeks, but the continuing surge of new virus cases has still proven overwhelming.
While the virus is spreading less at schools than in other settings due to measures including face covering requirements, spaced-out desks and smaller class sizes, schools present an added challenge for contact tracers. Because an entire classroom of students and their teachers can be deemed close contacts of someone who tests positive, school staff and students often have considerably more contacts to trace than others, according to the Department of Education.
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