Onondaga County hands off Covid contact tracing to employers, individuals

McMahon Gupta

Onondaga County Executive Ryan McMahon and his health commissioner, Dr. Indu Gupta, conduct a news conference Tuesday, Aug. 17, 2021.Tim Knauss

Syracuse, N.Y. -- Onondaga County has essentially ended Covid-19 contact tracing as thousands of cases from the new omicron variant overwhelm the health department.

Notifying people who might have been exposed now lies in the hands of the person who tests positive, and to employers, county officials said today.

In the early days of the pandemic, when contact tracing was seen as a major pillar in controlling the spread of the coronavirus, a contact tracer could complete about four cases per day. This month the county is confirming over 1,400 cases a day.

“It’s not feasible to do it in a timely manner,” County Executive Ryan McMahon said today. ”We did contact tracing, trying to find the spread, isolate it and see if you can find any patterns. Right now the pattern is it’s everywhere.”

Contact tracing is a common technique in public health to control the spread of infectious disease. When someone tests positive for Covid-19, contact tracers interview the person, find out who he or she was in close contact with, and then notify those people to go into quarantine.

All of that is now up to individuals and employers, said Dr. Indu Gupta, county health commissioner.

A person who tests positive for Covid-19, she said, should immediately go into isolation and notify everyone they had contact with during the potential infectious period and tell them to go into quarantine. Anyone who had close contact with an infected person should quarantine, where close contact is defined as being within 6 feet for at least 15 minutes.

The county has detailed guidance for isolation and quarantine at its Covid-19 website, and a flow chart to help people decide what they must do next. The length of time of isolation and quarantine vary depending on symptoms and vaccination status.

Gupta said employers should be notifying employees who were exposed to an infected person at work and telling them to quarantine. Schools are notifying parents when their children have been exposed, she said.

“We are not going to be calling everybody,” Gupta said.

The county is also allowing people to fill out their own isolation and quarantine paperwork, which is often needed to show employers why a person was absent and to file for family leave claims. The self-attestation forms are also on the county’s website.

Gov. Kathy Hochul said on Tuesday said the state will no longer require county health departments to perform contact tracing of positive Covid-19 cases. Some counties, including Oneida, had already announced they had ended contact tracing.

“The surging omicron variant has led to a staggering number of daily positive COVID-19 infections,” Oneida County Executive Anthony Picente said Monday. “There is no way that local health departments can keep up with the overwhelming volume.”

In Onondaga County, more than 100 contact tracers were at work during much of the pandemic. When the county curtailed operations and closed many offices in 2020, county employees were put to work calling patients and their contacts.

If you purchase a product or register for an account through a link on our site, we may receive compensation. By using this site, you consent to our User Agreement and agree that your clicks, interactions, and personal information may be collected, recorded, and/or stored by us and social media and other third-party partners in accordance with our Privacy Policy.