Once you have the testing more widespread, you need that ability to trace the contacts of everyone who tests positive. That's what we're going to build in the month of May. A contact tracing network in this City like never been seen before on a vast scale.
Every time someone tests positive, immediately we can swing into action, figure out who were their close contacts, get those people tested to isolate anyone who needs isolation. I'm announcing today that we are hiring, we are looking for talented, experienced health workers. If you have experience in the health care field, if you're ready to lend your talents, we need you and we need you right away. The City of New York plans to hire 1,000 contact tracers immediately. They will be working with all the health care personnel we have already and people we will train from a variety of City agencies to complement this work as well.
What will they do? The contact tracers will do the interviews to determine who were those key contacts, they'll follow up with those contacts, they'll arrange for each of them to be tested. Folks who need isolation, they'll make sure they're getting it. They'll help make sure that the steps that are needed are glued together and they’ll ask the questions that are needed, knowing how to ask the right questions, knowing how to search for the clues of the people in someone's life who tested positive, that need to be contacted, need to be followed up on, need to be tested.
Anyone interested should go to the Fund for Public Health website, it's fphnyc.org. We need you to come forward right away so we can get you into this battle and help save lives here in this City.
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