LA has spent 30 mil contact tracing to successfully reach 47k people

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Contact tracing racks up $30 million in costs but hasn't worked out like officials hoped

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Seven months and $30 million later, the program has not produced the type of results health experts initially wanted. Fewer than a third of people reached by the hundreds of contact tracers have shared close contacts, according to data provided by the Louisiana Department of Health, though the rate has improved slightly in recent months. And the number of people reached is still lower than 70% of cases.

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In all, the program has successfully reached a little over 47,000 people identified as close contacts of people infected with COVID-19, meaning the state has spent about $632 per person.

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Susanne Straif-Bourgeois, a former Louisiana Department of Health official who now teaches epidemiology at LSU Health Sciences Center New Orleans, suggested with the vaccine so close, the contact tracing money could be better used elsewhere.

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“I really don’t think (contact tracing) works in pandemic circumstances,” she said. “Clearly, I don’t think it worked as we would have hoped it could have worked.”

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The callers hired by the state to do the work face several roadblocks. Aly Neel, a Health Department spokeswoman, said the largest barrier is a lack of accurate contact information. The phone numbers provided by testing centers and other health providers are often missing or inaccurate.

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In June and July, fewer than 20% of people interviewed by the Health Department shared close contacts with the contact tracers

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In recent months, the number of people providing contacts to the agency has ticked up, to 48% in October and 44% in November, through the 13th.

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