Spike in Utah County coronavirus cases overwhelming contact tracers

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PROVO — If you get COVID-19, you might be responsible for telling all people you’ve come in contact with. That’s how busy contact tracers have been with the recent spike in Utah County.

“It’s quite time consuming, but we are trying to work as efficiently as possible,” said Aislynn Tolman-Hill, spokesperson for the Utah County Public Health Department.

The health department has been overwhelmed with cases, and now has positive patients acting as their own contact tracers.

They’ve begun calling people who contracted the virus, then giving them information to pass along to their second contacts.

The department has become spread thin with 120 to 150 people on staff each day calling hundreds of people.

“We do have (the) National Guard helping us doing contact tracing,” said Tolman-Hill.

Even so, they’ve been unable to keep up.

“A lot of those normal things that we would do on a daily basis, we can’t do. We will do those things as requested and needed, but it is an extraordinary time for our department,” she said.

“Anything the department does outside of COVID response, like inspections, needs to be booked in advanced,” Tolman-Hill said, in order for things to return to normal.

“Everyone is really going to have to come together,” she said.

The main priority right now was to let people know within 24 hours if they tested positive for the virus.

They ask that people self-isolate after getting a positive coronavirus test, to be safe.