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Spokane To Get More Outside Help With Covid Contact Tracing

Spokane Regional Health District

Spokane County Health Officer Bob Lutz says the health district will soon get more outside help with its work to trace people who test positive for Covid.

“We’re working with an organization called the Public Health Institute that was referred to me by a colleague in the state, where they have had very good luck in working with them," Lutz said.

The Public Health Institute is an organization based in Oakland, California that works in a variety of roles in public health.

“We will be bringing on a couple of teams of contact investigators, I believe as early as next week, maybe even later this week. Their work is just that, doing the labor-intensive contact investigations," he said.

That means they will help to make the phone calls needed to track positive cases back to their sources.

That work is led by health district epidemiologists. Local medical students on their summer breaks are helping. The health district also draws upon staff members at the Washington Department of Health, when they’re available.