Sec. 2. Nationwide contact tracing strategy

580 words·~3 min read·/bill/116/s/3848/is/section-2

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Not later than 21 days after the date of enactment of this Act, the Secretary, acting through the Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, shall— provide to the appropriate congressional committees a strategy to expand COVID–19 contact tracing; and include in such strategy recommendations to augment the capacity of State, Tribal, and local public health departments to train and place individuals into a Coronavirus Containment Corps to— investigate cases of COVID–19; identify the contacts of individuals confirmed or presumed to have been infected by coronavirus; trace such contacts; and provide supports to ensure that such contacts can take the precautions necessary to safely quarantine to stop the spread of COVID–19.

In developing the strategy under subsection (a), the Secretary shall consult with— State public health officials; Tribal public health officials, Indian Tribes, and Tribal organizations; local public health officials; the Director of the Indian Health Service; and experts with knowledge of or field experience concerning racial and ethnic disparities in public health and historically marginalized communities. The strategy under subsection

(a)shall identify— the minimum number of persons needed to investigate cases of COVID–19 and identify the contacts of individuals confirmed or presumed to have been infected by SARS–CoV–19 for each State and Indian Tribe; the minimum number of contact tracers needed for each State and Indian Tribe; the minimum number of specialists needed to connect contacts described in paragraph

(1)to social supports to ensure those contacts can take the precautions necessary to safely quarantine to stop the spread of COVID–19 for each State and Indian Tribe; the recommended qualifications necessary for case investigators, contact tracers, and social support specialists to perform such duties successfully; strategies to enable State, Tribal, and local public health departments to hire, train, and deploy case investigators, contact tracers, and social support specialists; strategies to rapidly develop guidance and training materials (including training on social determinants of health, cultural competency, communications skills, and implicit and explicit bias training) necessary to support public health departments in preparing individuals to serve as case investigators, contact tracers, and social support specialists; plans to use mobile or app-based contact tracing technology, including— plans to prevent the misuse of data and to ensure the automatic deletion of data after the conclusion of the COVID–19 public health emergency; and plans to prohibit data sharing with and within the Federal Government, with the exceptions of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Indian Health Service; strategies to record and publicly report deidentified data, while protecting— the privacy of individuals and information regarding their personal health; and Tribal data sovereignty; protocols to limit the risks posed to individual privacy and data security, including through data minimization, anonymizing and redacting, and limitations on sharing and storing personally identifiable information; strategies to monitor and evaluate best practices in contact tracing, with input from State, Tribal, and local public health departments; and strategies to coordinate with State and Tribal workforce agencies to recruit newly unemployed individuals— prioritizing individuals from within the communities in which they will work; and reflecting the diversity of that community. Not later than 7 days after the strategy under subsection

(a)is provided to the appropriate congressional committees, the Secretary shall provide the strategies described in subsection (c)(5) to States and Tribes. The Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shall coordinate with the Director of the Indian Health Service to ensure the strategy developed under this section meets the needs of Indian Tribes.