William Joy of WFAA - FORT WORTH, Texas — Two months into reopening, Texas needs help. In fact, it needs thousands of helpers. At least that’s what Edward Salsberg thinks. Salsberg is a senior researcher at The Mullan Institute at George Washington University and helped build a model to figure out how many contact tracers states need to track COVID-19. “People want to get back to being social,” he said. “That’s when you need the contact tracers the most.” Read More. 

Brad Schmidt of The Oregonian - State and local public health authorities have not yet built a fully robust system for contact tracing four months after coronavirus began sweeping through Oregon, according to public records released Tuesday. The George Washington University and two national organizations, representing public health agencies and officials, built the online estimator. An analysis by National Public Radio using that estimator last week suggested Oregon was one of seven states with enough tracers. “That suggests that there might be some work to do,” said Candice Chen, an associate professor at The George Washington University who is involved in the estimates. Read More. 

Aria Bendix of Business Insider - Health policy experts at George Washington University recently estimated that each state needs at least 15 contact tracers for every 100,000 residents to trace the last two weeks of new COVID-19 cases. States with bigger outbreaks or more lax social distancing policies may require even more. Read More. 

DCist Magazine published a piece reporting on Washington D.C.'s plan to reopen and the need for contact tracers citing the Mullan Institute's Contact Tracing Workforce Estimator and Dr. Candice Chen. Read the full article. 

In this article, NPR analyzed each state's current need for contact tracers to respond to COVID-19 based on the number of cases in each state, using the Contact Tracing Workforce Estimator developed by the Fitzhugh Mullan Institute for Health Workforce Equity at The George Washington University. Read the full article here.