Amid
the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and Mike
Bloomberg today announced a new nation-leading COVID-19 contact tracing
program to control the infection rate of the disease. Mike Bloomberg and
Bloomberg Philanthropies have committed organizational support and
technical assistance to help build and execute this new program. The
contact tracing program will be done in coordination with the downstate
region as well as New Jersey and Connecticut and will serve as an
important resource to gather best practices and as a model that can be
replicated across the nation. There has never been a contact tracing
program implemented at this scale either in New York or anywhere in the
United States. The program will launch immediately.
As
part of this effort, The Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns
Hopkins University will build an online curriculum and training program
for contact tracers. The New York State Department of Health will work
with Bloomberg Philanthropies to help identify and recruit contact
tracer candidates for the training program, including staff from the
State Department of Health, investigators from various state agencies,
hundreds of tracers from downstate counties and SUNY and CUNY students
in medical fields. Bloomberg Philanthropies will also work with New York
State to establish an expert panel to review the work of the program,
and create a best in class model that other states can use for contact
tracing.
We're all eager to begin loosening restrictions on our daily lives and
our economy. But in order to do that as safely as possible, we first
have to put in place systems to identify people who may have been
exposed to the virus and support them as they isolate," said Michael Bloomberg, founder of Bloomberg Philanthropies and Bloomberg LP, three-term mayor of New York City.
"I'm honored to partner with Governor Cuomo and New York State to help
do that, by creating a new contact tracing program on a widespread
scale. Coupled with far more testing, it will help us drive the virus
into a corner -- saving lives and allowing more people to begin getting
back to work."
