CLEVELAND, Ohio — Contact tracing has been one of the most talked about strategies in the fight against COVID-19. But how reliable is it and how has it changed with cases rising in younger people?

What You Need To Know


  • A pediatric infectious disease specialist says contact tracing has been used for 100 years or more to deal with various infectious diseases

  • Cuyahoga County currently has a shortage of contact tracers

  • The spike in young people contracting COVID has made things more difficult for contact tracers

Dr. Amy Edwards, with University Hospital's Rainbow Babies and Children's Hospital in Cleveland, says contact tracing — finding people who were exposed to someone diagnosed with COVID before they spread illness to other people — was handy when Ohio was flattening the curve. 

"One of the reasons that we wanted to flatten the curve is because if we wanted to get the case number down, then contact tracing can help bring it down the rest of the way," Edwards said.

One of the issues right now though, according to the Cuyahoga County Health Department, is a shortage of contact tracers. 
 
"Back in June, we were looking at a low of somewhere between 20 to 30 cases per day, and then in the last few days, about a week or so, we’ve been looking at over 100 cases a day," said Romona Brazile, co-director of Cuyahoga County's Prevention and Wellness Services. "And so, it’s very difficult to kind of keep the number of contact tracers we need to match what the surge is right now."

Brazile says the county has had success identifying people with COVID-19 through contact tracing.

But the county is also seeing a spike in cases from a younger population, compared to March and April, which can be harder to track down if they’ve been to places with a lot of people. 

"People are more mobile than they have been. So, they’re around more people, they’re going to more places, they’re traveling again, they’re going back to work, they’re working for multiple days sick, so it’s made all of that contact tracing more difficult."

And Division Director of Internal Medicine at MetroHealth Dr. Dave Margolius says contact tracing can sometimes come too late. 

"It'’s hard to remember who you were exposed to in many cases, and the other challenge is that the result doesn’t come back immediately," said Margolius. "With some of the pharmacies where it’s like a five- to seven-day turnaround to get the results, to then remember back to who you were exposed to, to talk to each of those folks, it might be too late."

The Cuyahoga County Board of Health says the greater testing availability has helped the county connect people who may have been exposed to COVID-19 get the testing they need.