State and local health officials said they need more contact tracers. KDHE is now stepping up to help Sedgwick County to meet the demand. “It is the backbone to finding cases, isolating, and quarantine,” said KDHE Secretary Dr. Lee Norman. With an increase in cases and very little staff, help is needed. “We’re so overwhelmed with the number of cases that we have and just having 18 active disease investigations that it’s a challenge enough,” said Sedgwick County Health Director Adrienne Byrne. Sedgwick County will be leaving it up to KDHE to contact trace each active case. “We’ve been looking a little bit in the rearview mirror and sometimes the data are 2-3 days older than we wanted,” said Dr. Norman. KDHE has hired about 50 contact tracers and plans to hire 50 more.
(Read more: KSN-TV)
