It's Brian Lehrer, and this is my daily politics podcast from WNYC Studios.

It's Monday, April 27th.

First comes expanded testing, then comes contact tracing.

That's what Governor Andrew Cuomo announced last week

about how New York will be able to reopen. The goal is 40,000 coronavirus tests a day,

and then trace those positive cases, see who they come in contact with, to limit further outbreaks,

and then comes the question of who and where to quarantine.

Here's what else we know. New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut will work together in the same

contact tracing effort. This will start going on around the country, too. Thousands of new

disease detectives, as they're being called, People whose job it is to track the virus's movement

will need to be hired, and former New York City Mayor, Michael Bloomberg, is footing part of the bill,

contributing $10 million to get contact tracing off the ground. In comparison, he spent a billion

on his failed presidential campaign, but it's a start. The tri-state

region will also partner with Johns Hopkins University and the nonprofit called Vital Strategies

to roll out the contact tracing program. With me now to talk about what contact tracing entails

and what it can accomplish and some of the hurdles is David Harvey. He's the executive

director of the D.C.-based National Coalition of STD Directors, an association that is no stranger to

contact tracing. They usually focus on controlling outbreaks of sexually transmitted diseases,

but now they're beginning to work with states to track the spread

of COVID-19. David, thank you for coming on. Welcome to WNYC. Good morning. Thank you for having me.

Most listeners might not have heard of contact tracing before this all started. Now everybody's hearing

of it, but your organization has been doing it for a long

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