After greater than two months at dwelling, librarian Lisa Fagundes misses managing her sci-fi e book assortment a lot, she feels she’s in withdrawal, longing to see new books, contact them, scent them. “It’s like a disease,” she stated, laughing.
Instead, she’s been studying to fight a unique illness: COVID-19. While libraries are closed, Fagundes is one in every of dozens of librarians coaching to turn out to be a contact tracer, calling individuals who have been uncovered to the coronavirus and asking them to self-quarantine at dwelling in order that they don’t unfold it additional.
Librarians are an apparent selection for the job, stated Fagundes, who often works on the info desk of the San Francisco Main Library. They’re curious, they’re tech-savvy, and so they’re actually good at getting individuals they barely know to open up.
“Because, a lot of times, patrons come up to you and they’re like, ‘Uhh, I’m looking for a book —’ and they don’t really know what they’re looking for or they don’t know how to describe it,” Fagundes stated.
Or they’re teenagers afraid to confess out loud that they’re on the lookout for books about intercourse or queer id. Fagundes is used to coaxing it out of them in an unflappable, nonjudgmental manner. Similar expertise are wanted for contact tracing, which includes asking individuals about their well being standing and private historical past.
“Talking about sensitive subjects is a natural thing for librarians,” she stated. “It’s a lot of open-ended questions, trying to get people to feel that you’re listening to them and not trying to take advantage or put your own viewpoint on their story.”
Fagundes is a part of the primary crew of contact tracers skilled by way of a brand new virtual academy led by the University of California-San Francisco. California awarded the college an $8.7 million contract in May to expand the academy and prepare 20,000 new contact tracers all through California by July — one of many nation’s largest such efforts.
Gov. Gavin Newsom says counties want 15 contact tracers for each 100,000 residents to adequately comprise the virus after stay-at-home orders are lifted.
Smaller contact-tracing groups have been in a position to handle the workload in latest months, whereas most individuals have been staying dwelling. Local well being officers stated every new one that assessments optimistic for the coronavirus was in shut contact with a mean of 4 or 5 individuals whereas infectious — sometimes relations and neighbors.
But as counties start permitting companies to reopen, an individual’s common contacts will rise to 40, and shall be a lot tougher to find, necessitating a bigger workforce to establish and name them.
“You have a four- or five-day window to find people and get them isolated, which is what we do instead of treat them, because we don’t have treatment for COVID,” stated Dr. George Rutherford, a UCSF professor of epidemiology who’s main the coaching effort.
The new coaching program takes 20 hours over the course of 5 days to finish and includes classes on epidemiology and motivational interviewing, and demonstrations of the right way to make contact-tracing telephone calls. Right now, all contact tracers work at home whereas on paid furlough or working half time at their common jobs.
In addition to librarians, San Francisco has requested authorities workers from the tax assessor and metropolis legal professional places of work to assist out, together with monetary analysts, paralegals and investigators. Some rural counties have been recruiting sheriff’s deputies for the job.
“In other states they love to pick up people who worked as airline reservation agents, because they’re used to talking to people all day long and trying to work things out for them,” Rutherford stated.
Megan Elliott is a supervisor within the San Francisco Assessor’s Office, the place she oversees the valuation of actual property to determine how a lot tax to cost. She is used to having conversations the place she has to inform individuals issues they don’t need to hear.
“For residential properties, a lot of times it has to do with a property owner who believes that we unfairly valued their new construction project,” she stated. “So my job is to communicate to the taxpayers in a way that they can better understand why we do what we do and to help them see the reason and rationale behind that.”
It takes related finesse to inform those who they’ve been in touch with somebody who examined optimistic for the coronavirus and that they’ll’t go to work for the following two weeks. Elliott explains the significance of defending the group from the virus, or the distinction between quarantine (staying dwelling should you’ve been uncovered however aren’t symptomatic) and isolation (avoiding relations inside your property should you do know you might be sick).
Investigators from town legal professional’s workplace have been making use of their people-finding expertise. Some individuals who turn out to be ailing could also be reluctant to share details about their shut contacts, or, they simply don’t know sufficient details about the individuals they’ve been in shut quarters with.
“Let’s say you’re on a job site, working construction, and you had lunch with a guy, ‘Oh, it’s Bob, he’s a steamfitter,’” stated Rutherford. “That’s the kind of thing that we’re facing, that we get partial locating information.”
City investigators are conversant in databases and digital gumshoe methods for locating Bob’s final title and telephone quantity, so he might be notified and get examined.
The purpose is to coach sufficient contact tracers to serve all 58 counties in California, however the state is leaving it as much as every county to roll out this system and deal with the specifics, corresponding to what sort of assist companies to supply individuals requested to self-quarantine.
In San Francisco, when individuals who could also be infectious are requested to remain dwelling, contact tracers refer them to get examined, provide them free cleansing provides and assist with grocery and drugs deliveries. If they’ll’t isolate themselves safely from different relations at dwelling, residents have the choice of staying in a city-funded resort room.
San Francisco additionally plans to launch a program to assist substitute two weeks of misplaced revenue, as much as $1,200, for individuals who take a look at optimistic however don’t have a job with paid sick go away or can not entry unemployment insurance coverage advantages.
South of San Francisco, in Santa Clara County, the place the primary COVID-19 circumstances within the U.S. had been recognized, well being officers have struggled to recruit sufficient librarians and different county workers to turn out to be contact tracers. Officials at the moment are asking for 800 volunteers from the group to satisfy their purpose of constructing a 1,000-person case investigation and call tracing crew, with an emphasis on volunteers who can speak other languages, significantly Spanish and Vietnamese.
In San Francisco, some staffers from town legal professional’s workplace have been instructed they are going to ultimately return to their common jobs half time and proceed doing contact tracing half time. Librarian Lisa Fagundes has been doing 4 four-hour contact tracing shifts per week.
“It’s something that I feel like I could do for the rest of the year, if needed, then when the library starts ramping up, I could do both,” she stated. “But, I think that the library will not be ramping up to full service anytime soon, because it’s not an essential service — as much as we may disagree.”
This story is a part of a partnership that features KQED, NPR and Kaiser Health News.
