NYC Covid-19 contact tracers brace for long, hard winter: Report

New York, Dec 29 : New York City’s coronavirus contact-tracing team will be put to the test amid the ongoing winter season as a recent resurgence in fresh coronavirus cases is expected to continue through the holiday season, a media report said.
While the introduction of Covid-19 vaccines has given New Yorkers hope that the worst part of the pandemic will be over in 2021, the city still must navigate through a difficult winter, Xinhua news agency quoted The Wall Street Journal report published on Monday as saying.
The city’s seven-day average of new and probable Covid-19 cases has exceeded 3,000 for most of December, up from about 250 new cases daily at the start of September.
Ted Long, executive director of the city’s Covid-19 Test and Trace Corps, told the newspaper that his team has been preparing for this moment. The corps has added 1,000 members since summer, and now has a total 4,000 staffers.
“We are staffed, and we are ready to handle all cases through the surge,” Long said.
Contact tracing remains one of the most important tools for public-health officials to curb the spread of the virus.