WHO wants contact tracing ramped up

The World Health Organization on Monday called for stepped-up efforts in contact tracing as a major tool to suppress COVID-19 transmission in the face of the coronavirus' rapid spread around the world, including among indigenous peoples.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus expressed deep concern about the impact of the novel coronavirus on indigenous peoples in the Americas, the current epicenter of the pandemic.

More than 70,000 cases were reported among indigenous peoples in the Americas by July 6, with more than 2,000 deaths, according to the WHO.

"One of the key tools for suppressing COVID-19 transmission in indigenous communities and all communities is contact tracing," Tedros told a virtual news conference from Geneva.

He noted that lockdown measures can help reduce the transmission of the virus, but they cannot completely stop it.

"No country can get control of its epidemic if it doesn't know where the virus is," he said.

Tedros described contact tracing as essential for finding and isolating cases and identifying and quarantining the contacts of these people.

Essential for every nation

While mobile applications can support contact tracing, Tedros said that nothing replaces boots on the ground－trained workers going door to door to find cases and contacts in order to break the chains of transmission.

"Contact tracing is essential for every country, in every situation. It can prevent individual cases from becoming clusters, and clusters turning into community transmission," he said, adding that it is all the more critical as countries are opening up.

Tedros said that contact tracing must be part of a comprehensive package. "But it is one of the most important," he said.

The United States government has drawn fire for blocking funding for contact tracing and testing, and to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC.

The White House is seeking to block congressional plans to provide additional billions of dollars to states for COVID-19 testing and tracing, and for the CDC and other health agencies, the Washington Post reported on Sunday.

The US has no federal program or mobile application to trace the contacts of people with coronavirus infections, leaving it to local authorities.

Reuters reported on Monday that technology company Uber has quietly launched a service to give public health officials quick access to data on drivers and passengers presumed to have come into contact with someone infected with COVID-19.

A recent Reuters review of contact-tracing policies by 32 US state and local health departments found most did not use ride-hailing data to track the virus spread.