<figure>
 <img src="https://media.eaglewebservices.com/public/2020/6/1592578627821.png" alt="Ashley Peterson is a contact tracer for the Kansas City Health Department. Kansas City Health Department photo" />
 <figcaption>Ashley Peterson is a contact tracer for the Kansas City Health Department. Kansas City Health Department photo</figcaption>
 </figure>By ALEX SMITH <a href="https://www.kcur.org/health/2020-06-18/as-kansas-and-missouri-reopen-new-research-says-states-still-lack-enough-contact-tracers-to-slow-covid-19">Kansas News Service</a>Health experts say that contact tracers—health care workers whose job
 it is to reach out to individuals who may have been exposed to the 
coronavirus to instruct them to isolate—are essential to keep COVID-19 
from spreading. But updated research shows that both Kansas and 
Missouri lack adequate numbers of contact tracers even though both 
states have been gradually reopening for weeks. Still, some health 
officials dispute the findings.While many cities, counties and 
states have made significant progress in COVID-19 preparedness, many 
others are still struggling on contact tracing, including Johnson 
County, Kansas, which has made huge strides in testing but still doesn’t
 have enough contact tracers.“Right now, no,” wrote Johnson 
County health department spokeswoman Barbara Mitchell in an email, 
explaining that the county is currently understaffed and would be even 
further strained in the event of a new surge of COVID-19 cases.Nationally,
 few states currently have enough of these workers, according to an 
analysis by NPR using data from George Washington University’s Contact 
Workforce Estimator.Kansas currently has 12.33 contact tracers, 
including reserve workers, per 100,000 residents, short of the roughly 
17 per 100,000 needed, according to the analysis.Missouri, 
meanwhile, has only .49 tracers per 100,000 residents, well below the 
roughly 14 per 100,000 needed there, the analysis shows.However, 
the NPR analysis for Missouri only includes contact tracers working for 
the state health department, not those working in county and local 
health departments. The omission, which was not explained in the NPR 
report, likely makes the state’s capacity appear much lower than it 
actually is.The George Washington University researchers based their estimates of contact tracer needs on 14-day case counts.Health
 officials say that efforts to recruit contact tracers have been 
hampered by lack of funding and the time and effort required to hire and
 train these workers.Kansas Department of Health and Environment 
spokeswoman Ashley Jones-Wisner wrote in an email that, so far, the 
state has generally managed to handle its contact tracing needs.“Currently,
 our state has adequate contact tracers to assist local health 
departments with multiple surges should they request assistance,” 
Jones-Wisner wrote.She explained that contact tracing is usually 
performed by people working in local and county health departments, and 
that state tracers are only used when local and county workers are 
overwhelmed.She says that the state contact tracers, which 
include dozens of reassigned staff members and volunteers, have only 
been called upon to help in two local Kansas outbreaks, in Ford and 
Jackson counties.Many state and local health departments, 
including Johnson and Wyandotte Counties in Kansas and Jackson County 
and the city of Kansas City in Missouri, are currently hiring full-time 
contact tracers to work on a temporary basis.Missouri’s 
Department of Health and Senior Services did not immediately respond on 
Thursday to inquiries regarding contact tracers, but some local health 
departments in the Kansas City area indicated that they were struggling.The
 Kansas City, Missouri, health department currently has a total of three
 full-time workers doing contact tracing, with other staff currently 
reassigned to do the work part time, according to spokesman Bill Snook.Kansas
 City, Missouri has received no state or federal funding for contact 
tracing, Snook wrote in an email, and is currently funding the work 
through the local health levy.Many of the city’s contact tracers have also been experiencing fatigue with the work.“Some
 contacts or cases do not understand the need or want to comply our 
instructions which adds to the stress and emotional, mental and physical
 toll it takes on the multiple teams working multiple parts of the 
pandemic response,” Snook wrote in an email.The Jackson County, 
Missouri, health department is aiming to complete its contact tracing 
team during the next two months, according to spokeswoman Kayla Parker.Parker
 says the health department plans to have 10 contact tracers per 100,000
 residents, which she acknowledges is less than the recommended capacity
 of 15-30 tracers per 100,000. She notes that the health department did 
not receive the full amount of federal CARES funding it requested.She says that lack of public cooperation also continues to derail contact tracing efforts.“One
 obstacle we continue to face is resistance from some individuals in the
 community to provide information,” Parker wrote in an email. “In order 
to protect our population, it is imperative that people respond to our 
calls and give their contacts.”Alex Smith is a health reporter for KCUR 89.3.&nbsp;

Research: States still lack enough contact tracers to slow virus