Washington Gov. Jay Inslee said Tuesday that the state’s contact tracing team will be in place by the end of the week and revealed other details of the program, which is seen as essential to re-opening the state’s economy.
By May 15, Washington will have 1,371 contact tracers trained and ready to investigate the contacts of COVID-19 patients and notify them that they may have been exposed to the virus. The state National Guard will supply about half of the contact tracers temporarily while more workers and volunteers are trained.
Inslee’s announcement made no mention of the cellphone-based contact tracing programs that Apple and Google are developing for their respective mobile operating systems.
The new generation of technology-enabled contact tracing has quickly become a lightning rod, with privacy experts sounding the alarm. Washington state appears to be adopting a more traditional approach in which contact tracers reach out by phone to residents who may have been exposed.
