COVID-19 cases increased dramatically two months ago when the dean of the University of Texas School of Public Health at San Antonio negotiated the hiring of a lot of case researchers and touch tracers to slow the progression of the deadly disease.
In an june 17 email to San Antonio Metropolitan Health District officials, Dr. Jack Tsai raised a primary concern.
“Your request is also that all case investigators paint in a giant workplace,” Tsai wrote. “Because of monetary pricing and considerations about COVID infection among case researchers, I recommend a hybrid technique of having more workspace for key staff, but that case investigators and touch markers be displayed remotely.”
Two months later, Metro Health still asks all case investigators to paint in a cavernous but non-unusual area of the Alamodome for up to two hundred people, creating a threat that has led some recruits to withdraw from the post.
Case investigators perform the critical task of calling those who test positive for COVID-19 and asking them to call their close contacts. In a separate process, the touch plotters then call those nearby contacts and ask them to quarantine for 14 days to break the coronavirus transmission chain.
The $2 million contract between UT Health and Metro Health required the school to rent two hundred case investigators until the end of November.
In ExpressNews.com: Metro Health waited to rent enough COVID-19 trackers until the virus hit San Antonio
Last week, UT Health hired and trained 50 researchers. According to a schedule run through Metro Health, they began operating in Alamodome on Wednesday with about 115 Metro Health employees, many of whom have been disposed of responsibilities such as vaccines, which are declining nationwide.
The fitness districts’ plan to increase the workforce as needed, which hires and educate more staff before a new wave arrives has alarmed some public fitness experts who fear San Antonio will freeze with COVID-19. Workplaces and schools are starting to reopen, increasing the risk of a new wave of infections, hospitalizations and deaths.
Jimmy Perkins, former dean of the UT Health School of Public Health in San Antonio, watched with dismay in June as Metro Health officials rushed to a dim paint force, in the component of urging his own staff to work overtime on case investigations and touch the findings. infections increased. Thousands of cases were late, but never investigated.
In ExpressNews.com: Metro Health ‘submerged’ through the rise of COVID-19
Now Perkins fears that Metro Health has been informed of your past mistake.
“It’s the same philosophy we had two months ago. And you see where they gave it to us,” Perkins said. “You can’t rent and exercise other people fast enough to keep up with the epidemic. Here we are, we are in the same delicate situation. We’re overstaffed if we have to recover. And we’re going on to have some kind of recovery.” when other people return to school.
“When other people die for something like this and we know how to save you, and we don’t do everything we can to save them,” he said, “someone will be asked about it.”
Metro Health director Colleen Bridger said the city branch has enough case investigators and touch trackers to deal with the existing load as well as long-term overloads.
Fifty other case investigators hired through UT Health will enroll in the workforce in September, he said, even as Metro Health will take 43 employees reassigned to their original positions.
“I think what we’ve created here is an intermediate floor because we have 165 more people, and we’re going to go up another 50 from September 1,” Bridger said. “I think if you ask someone, adding the critics, when they think the next peak will happen, they’ll say it after Labor Day. We will have another 215 people trained and able to paint for this wave that comes after Labor Day. . »
Metro Health doubled the number of investigations completed in 8 hours from five to 10 to 12, Bridger said, meaning researchers can now deal with 1650 to 1980 cases a day.
“Literally, we have more people investigating cases than cases to investigate,” he says. “We’re not going to 3,500 (instances) tomorrow. That’s not how this pandemic works. So, if we get to the point where we have to call the other hundred (UT Health case investigators), we will. However, the last thing I have to do is have a lot of other people paid at the Alamodome or stay home doing nothing. I can’t protect him either.”
COVID-19 cases have fallen in recent weeks from a maximum of 2000 to an average of around 250 consistent with the day. On Friday, Bexar County reported 150 new cases.
In ExpressNews.com: COVID-19 – coronavirus in numbers in San Antonio
In search of contacts, the town trusted emocha, a cellular generation company.
Currently, “all touches get a call within 24 to 48 hours,” Bridger said. “We’re moving these paintings to the state, which plans to rent to another 4,000 people to make touch notifications across the state. If we believe that Texas Health Trace staff cannot comply with the two- or three-touch notice as the case may be, we may re-enter or deploy more UT Health staff to get the job done.”
On August 8, a few days before the 50 case investigators hired through UT Health began operating in Alamodome, a contact-seeking organization met practically to discuss updates.
Tsai, the dean of UT Health and member of the group of brokers, provided at the meeting, which is not public.
According to the meeting notes, Tsai raised the same considerations he had had in June: “Dr. Tsai added that the School of Public Health looks for features remotely because several potential researchers were involved in protecting COVID-19 internally Alamodome. Although there is enough space, many others in one position were cause for concern.
The note-taker boldly added: “UT SPH prefers remote paintings to adhere to COSA COVID’s restrictions on meetings.
Emergency orders from the city prohibit any collection or occasion of more than 10 people, indoors or outdoors. Local government operations are exempt from the rule.
Experts warn that the virus is suspended in the air and spreads further indoors.
“As far as I’m concerned, once you walk in, in my opinion, the 6-foot rule is useless,” Perkins said. “We’re getting more and more evidence about it every day.”
The ability of case researchers and touch plotters for paints varies remotely from state to state.
Some of Austin Public Health’s 48 paintings remotely, while others paint on a rotating schedule on the site. At the Houston Department of Health, three hundred case investigators and paints from touch plotters in a conference center.
Adelita Cantu, a professor at the UT School of Health in San Antonio and co-chair of the Contact Search Working Group, said some other people hired through UT Health had given up after learning that they may not have painted remotely.
“Right now, (Metro Health) has brought 50 to 60 and they have closed recruitment,” Cantú said. “There were many other people who applied for, and they were going to start with that amount. Initially, they hired more, but when other people discovered there would be no remote option, they gave up.
“Individuals were told they didn’t have a remote option,” he added. “And most people think they did and they didn’t settle for the offer because they didn’t have that choice.”
Tsai refused to be interviewed for this article. A UT Health spokesperson responded to questions emailed.
“Dr. Tsai needs comment on potential investigators,” he said. “He expects there to be a remote option. The school plans to hire more area in its construction for researchers.”
Last month, Bridger said researchers would “probably” paint remotely, “at least in the near future.”
“For other people who haven’t done it in their public fitness careers, they want to be in a position where they can ask questions, where they can get that kind of uninterrupted daily click: this is what we find, this is what we are doing, that’s how we paint around x, y y y z,” he said then. “So, for at least a month, we’ll still have to share the location and, in combination, how we handle this ever-changing situation.”
On Friday, Bridger said Metro Health had made technological advances and an option for remote paints on the horizon. He didn’t propose a schedule.
“Once the new processes are trained and developed to allow remote work,” Bridger said, “we will.
Mayor Ron Nirenberg said Metro Health deserves a choice of remote paints for case investigators who prefer it.
He said he encouraged the fitness district’s efforts to strengthen its staff.
“I think we want to make sure we have the ability to indicate the number of cases we might encounter at the top of a peak, not what we have now,” Nirenberg said. “And based on the operations that were put into position before, we had to hire, and that’s what they do.
“We don’t need to be in the same scenario we’re in in June,” he added.
Cantu, co-chair of the Contact Search Working Group, said expanding to allow remote paints is a must for the fall technique. He cited a recent warning from Dr. Junda Woo, medical director of Metro Health, that coronavirus outbreaks are inevitable in schools despite the most productive preventive measures.
“If this is the case, the more equipment we have to mitigate an epidemic, the more it takes to set up this process,” Cantú said. “I think if we were out, we would definitely have more access to the other people who need to, and we would feel able to do it as well.”
Bridger said anyone involved about Metro Health’s existing workforce will be reassured by the calculations.
“I think they’re more concerned than they deserve,” he says. “I think maybe having a greater understanding of the whole picture could help them. If we have the same momentum as last month, we have 100 percent staff and we’re in a position to deal with that.”
Brian Chasnoff graduated from Tulane University, as well as the University of Texas at Austin, where he earned a master’s degree in journalism.
He joined the San Antonio Express-News in 2005 as a police reporter. He was a subway columnist for seven years before joining the research team in 2019.
As a journalist and columnist, Brian has denounced corruption and cover-ups in the ranks of local government, adding at the Bexar County City Hall and Courthouse.