Columbia/Boone County contact tracers caught up on backlog as daily new cases decline

COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)

After weeks of the Columbia/Boone County Health Department reporting a backlog of case investigations amid large spikes in cases, things are starting to settle down.

Health officials say there is no backlog in contact tracing as of Friday, citing the drop in daily cases reported and more staff available for the investigations.

Daily cases totals have been on the decline since large spikes were seen in August. On Friday, 57 new cases of COVID-19 were reported in the county, bringing the total to 4,845 with 333 currently active.

While daily cases trend downward, the department reported a 1.8 increase in the county's positivity rate, which is at 12.8 for the week of September 25 through October 1.

A Senior Planner who oversees part of the contact tracing process Todd Guess said the goal is to contacts 90 percent close contacts within 24 hours, which has been met for the past few weeks.

"Both sides of our team are doing really well right now," Guess said. "We're managing to keep up with the new cases, and as new contacts are identified we are clearing those out."

Guess said that there are currently 26 people working on contact monitoring and tracing at the health department. The University of Missouri employs a majority of those people, but 11 are either employees of volunteers working for the city.

Right now, tracers still have to call each close contact, but the department has been discussing getting a secure texting system which he said would be very helpful in the process.

"Some of the barriers that we still run into are people not answering phones from numbers that they aren't familiar with, so we leave a lot of voicemails," Guess said. "So having the ability to send text messages to cases and contacts would really streamline our process"

The assistant director of the department said the system has not been purchased as of Friday, pending some legal agreements.

While the downward slope in new cases is helping out in keeping the backlog down, Guess said some of the new cases have large groups of contacts which is concerning.

"Unfortunately a trend we have seen in the last few weeks, that while the number of cases overall have gone down, we are seeing a lot more cases in team athletics and those rural Boone County School districts which are inseat," Guess said. "In those scenarios there's a lot of contacts."

He said there are strategies in place to contact those people involved in a potential mass exposure.

Watch ABC17 News at 9 and 10 for the full story.