Health officers urge people with COVID-19 to call close contacts, not wait for overwhelmed contact tracers

Public health officers are urging Portland area residents who’ve tested positive for COVID-19 to reach out “right away” to anyone they’ve been in close contact with, including employers, and encourage them to take steps to quarantine or isolate, effectively having Oregonians conduct their own contact tracing program.

The top health officers in the metro area made that plea Tuesday, saying that the region’s contact tracing workforce is unable to perform those duties in a timely manner as coronavirus cases continue to increase at a torrid pace.

Multnomah County’s contact tracers are reaching “about half” of confirmed cases reported in the county right now, said Dr. Jennifer Vines, the lead health officer for the tri-county region.

That suggests more than 1,120 people living in Oregon’s most populous county haven’t been interviewed about their close contacts in the past week, nor in all likelihood have those close contacts learned from county officials they’ve been exposed and instructed to stay home to prevent spreading the virus to others.

“This is new,” Vines said of the urgent message to have COVID-positive Oregonians notify close contacts themselves, calling it, “the right thing to do” to help slow transmission.

Earlier this month, health officers acknowledged they were struggling to keep up with the record-setting rise in COVID-19 infections in Multnomah, Washington and Clackamas counties, with cases in the past week now averaging above 600 a day, more than double from three weeks ago. The state is nearly one week into a partial shutdown ordered by Gov. Kate Brown in an attempt to tamp down the virus’ spread and prevent hospitals, which are seeing record numbers of COVID-19 patients, from being overrun.

But until now health officials hadn’t been so explicit about their inability to conduct contact tracing, and the messaging still remains a bit murky. Across the Washington border, in Clark County, health officials were far more direct Monday, saying not everyone who is infected will be interviewed for contact tracing.

“Those cases who are not reached within two days of the positive test result,” Clark County officials said in a news release, “will not likely receive a call from Public Health.”