The Tennessee Department of Health will stop investigating the vast majority of COVID-19 cases and instead focus contact tracing efforts on high-risk settings only, according to a department spokesperson.
Spokesperson Bill Christian said in an email the state is in the process of reviewing recently released recommendations that support no longer trying to trace the chain of transmission for every positive case.
“At this point in the pandemic, the public knows the appropriate actions they should take if they are COVID positive or suspect they have been exposed,” Christian said. “States have the opportunity to transition to more effective and strategic approaches. As such, our universal contact tracing efforts will decrease significantly over the coming weeks and months with our efforts remaining on case investigations in more high-risk settings.”
The department’s contract with Xtend Healthcare – a for-profit medical billing firm that took over COVID-19 contact tracing for the state in June 2020 – ended Jan. 31, he said.
Contact tracing was key to understanding and slowing the spread of coronavirus in the earlier days of the pandemic. When a COVID-19 case was confirmed, case investigators worked to determine the infected person’s whereabouts and help notify their close contacts that they, too, could be infected and should be tested and quarantined.