Cortland County to bring onboard temporary contact tracing team

Cortland County is hiring a team of six COVID-19 contact tracers on a per-diem basis, citing the rise of COVID-19 transmission in the county as a reason to strengthen the county’s contact tracing efforts.

At Thursday’s county legislature meeting, legislators unanimously approved the part-time, temporary positions. The appointment would last from Sept. 24, to March 23 next year. The contact tracers would work up to 30 hours a week for a rate of $20 an hour.

The resolution was brought on by county legislature chairman Paul Heider (R-LD16), based on the recommendation of the county’s health department. 

County legislator Ann Homer (D-LD 7) submitted an amendment to the resolution to specify that the positions do not include paid benefits.

Cortlandville resident and town board candidate Pamela Jenkins, who worked for the New York State Department of Health’s (NYSDOH) contact tracing team for 14 months, spoke in support of the new hires.

“These positions will support our overly burdened (county) health department,” Jenkins said, reflecting on her own experience as a contact tracer. “By interviewing and educating, we helped decrease the numbers of individuals who were spreading the virus. We helped to keep families healthy and thereby reduced the number of people dying from the virus.” 

Jenkins spoke on the burden that falls on contact tracers after hours of interviews.

“I was glad to be done because it is very stressful to speak with people all day who are in fear and in pain and some others who are in desperate need of services,” she said. “(There were) others who had just lost loved ones.”  

Cases in the county have risen back to significant figures in recent weeks, as virus mutations and the rise of the delta variant continue to ravage parts of the country. As of Thursday, the county has 173 active COVID-19 cases and eight current hospitalizations. 

Every county in New York is deemed as having “high” community transmission levels by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Under CDC criteria, “high” transmission areas are those with 100 or more cases per 100,000 people or a positivity rate of 10% or higher every seven days.

Because of these numbers, Jenkins urged the county to continue to set up vaccine clinics and testing sites to help mitigate the spread. 

In a recent interview with Nicole Anjeski, the county’s deputy health director, she reflected on the hardships brought on by the pandemic.

“Some of the biggest challenges (we) faced was the uncertainty of the impact this pandemic would have on our community, the constant influx of guidance, rules and recommendations misinformation, vaccine hesitancy and the lack of staff resources,” Anjeski said.

Some of the challenges that still remain revolve around misinformation and vaccine hesitancy, Anjeski said

“There is still the subset of the community that does not want to believe the science, are anti-vaccination, are anti-government, which can add to misinformation; but we make continuous efforts to put scientific evidence-based information out to the public and dispel any false information provided,” Anjeski said.

Anjeski noted vaccine hesitancy is not unique to Cortland.

“This has been a challenge all over the nation and we will continue to encourage those that are vaccine eligible to receive the vaccine,” she said.