We may need 300,000 contact tracers to defeat COVID-19. We have 2,200

Enlarge / Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), speaks during a Coronavirus Task Force news conference at the White House in Washington, DC, on Wednesday, April 8, 2020. (credit: Getty | Bloomberg)

As Americans anxiously await news of when they can emerge from their 4-meter-wide personal-space bubbles and go back to something resembling normal life, public health experts are working furiously to determine essential steps to get us there safely. And a consensus is emerging that key among those steps is recruiting a massive number of people to perform contact tracing.

"It is going to be critical," Director Robert Redfield of the US Centers for Disease Control told NPR in an interview late last week. Scaled-up contact tracing, along with increased testing, is needed to "make sure that when we open up, we open up for good."

"We can't afford to have multiple community outbreaks that can spiral up into sustained community transmission," he said, "so it is going to be very aggressive, what I call 'block and tackle,' 'block and tackle.'"

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