The U.S. Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) no longer recommends universal COVID-19 case investigation and contact tracing, instead saying health departments should direct those efforts to specific high-risk settings.
The Feb. 28 update to the CDC guidance comes nearly two years after Robert Redfield, the agency’s previous director, told Congress that America needed as many as 100,000 people working as contact tracers to track the spread of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus that causes COVID-19.
According to CDC, a contact tracer is expected to quickly locate and talk with individuals tested positive for the CCP virus, find out who they have recently been in close contact with, and then call those people to notify them about their exposure and encourage them to enter a 14-day quarantine to prevent further transmission.