An army of coronavirus tracers takes shape in Massachusetts

BOSTON - Alexandra Cross, a newly minted state public health worker, dialed a stranger's telephone number on Monday , her heart racing.

The programme represents a bet on the part of Governor Charlie Baker that the state will be able to identify pockets of infection as they emerge and prevent infected people from spreading the virus further. "It's not cheap," Baker, a Republican, said."But the way I look at it, the single biggest challenge we're going to have is giving people confidence and comfort that we know where the virus is."

It is built around one-on-one telephone interviews of newly diagnosed patients and their contacts so that subjects must answer the phone when it rings. Paul Farmer, a physician-anthropologist and one of the group's founders, said there was no substitute for the bond of trust formed by a human contact tracer."'If this is Covid-19, we got you. And we'll look out for your contacts, your spouse and your children.

But human outreach is a standard public health practice, first used in many countries to seek out sexual partners of men and women known to be carriers of sexually transmitted diseases. In a late-night phone call at the end of March, Kim pitched his idea to Baker, pointing to data from Wuhan, China, that showed that social distancing alone could not bring the virus's spread rate low enough to lift the current restrictions.

"You've got to be able to connect to people in some way that's meaningful that's beyond a ping on the phone," he said.

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