You're listening to shortwave from NPR.

Early in the pandemic, with no vaccine in sight, contact tracing seemed like one of the

best options to get the coronavirus under control.

There has to be a substantial augmentation of the public health work or CDC.

That's former CDC director Robert Redfield talking to NPR in April 2020.

Back then, stories were coming out about how Hong Kong and Singapore were able to contain

their COVID-19 outbreaks by deploying thousands of public health workers to track down every

positive case, figure out who they've been in contact with, and quickly get those people

to quarantine.

If everyone who has been exposed stays home, then the virus can't spread.

The centerpiece of our response needs to be the tried and true proven to work, public health

response of early case recognition diagnosis, isolation, and contact tracing.

But contact tracing takes a lot of time, a lot of public health manpower, something that

the US did not have.

CDC director Redfield was adamant that the US could scale up.

He talked about partnering with the Census Bureau or the Peace Corps to build an army of contact

tracers big enough to cover the US.

100,000, 300,000.

I don't know what the exact number is, but we're prepared to expand the public health workforce

for contact tracing to the extent that we need it.

And Selina, those comments got you curious as a health policy reporter, right?

Yes, when I heard that, I wanted to know how many contact tracers the US had in the first

...