Texas to Hire 5,000 Workers to Trace COVID-19 Spread

AUSTIN, TX – Coronavirus cases in Texas have surpassed 48,000 and the Department of State Health Services has not been able to contact every Texan who has tested positive.

According to KXAN, DSHS will need close to 5,000 workers, including contact tracers, that will contact positive patients, other jobs include case managers and epidemiologists.

The Workforce Solutions Rural Capital Area is working with higher education partners to create a course or training program that can ensure some of the temporary positions become long term careers.

Currently, it is not necessary to have a medical background to become a contact tracer, and those interested are only required to take a free Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health course online.

“We need to make sure that we can have these positions filled so that we can mitigate any type of outbreak that happens in our community and really quickly identified what happened, what causes to happen, and how can we prevent that from happening again,” said WSRCA’s Chief Operating Officer Diane Tackett. “This is very critical for us and it’s a high priority for us to really recruit quickly and get those positions filled.”

The minimum requirements include having a high school diploma and having communication and computer skills. The current pay range for these positions is $14 – $19 but will vary depending on the agency that hires the contact tracers.

Officials are currently working on the details and implementation of the program.