contact-tracing

How are Pa. Health officials planning to increase accountability, privacy with new contact tracer?

BY: - July 21, 2021

It’s believed that an unauthorized document with the health information of 76,000 Pennsylvanians has been scrubbed from the internet, the state’s top health official told a legislative panel on Wednesday.

Thousands in Pa. could have compromised health data. A Senate panel wants answers

BY: - May 11, 2021

The Health Department begged off Tuesday's hearing, saying pending litigation barred the agency from appearing. 

Third-party contact tracer left Pennsylvanians’ personal health data unsecured, Wolf admin says

BY: and - April 29, 2021

(*This story was updated at 4:55 p.m. on Thursday, 4/29/21 with comment from Insight Global, state Rep. Jason Ortitay, and the Wolf administration)  A private vendor that the Pennsylvania Department of Health hired to contact trace COVID-19 cases in the commonwealth ignored security protocols and established an unauthorized database with the personal information of tens […]

Pew Study: Contact tracing efforts face skepticism, participation challenges | The Numbers Racket

BY: - November 23, 2020

An October study by the Pew Research Center found that while most Americans are aware of contact tracing efforts nationwide, there are many challenges tracers face, including participation, skepticism about the process of data collection and spam concerns. 

Pa. to launch free app to alert users of potential COVID-19 exposure

BY: - August 18, 2020

The app, COVID Alert Pa, will be free to download starting in September, state Health Secretary Dr. Rachel Levine said Tuesday.

Protest2_car

Break quarantine, risk legal action, Pa. warns people exposed to COVID-19

BY: - August 7, 2020

The letter, potentially sent to thousands, is a new frontier in how the commonwealth acts, or at least talks, about its virus response, one expert said.

Librarians, national guard recruited for states’ new contact tracing armies

BY: - May 24, 2020

States are looking to deploy a huge new fleet of workers to keep cases under control as they emerge from COVID-19 prompted lockdowns. 

Pa. health chief says state is ‘doing well’ on contact tracing as counties reopen. But others fear we’re lagging

BY: - May 15, 2020

“We're just not doing enough,” Dr. Ping Du, a professor of epidemiology at Penn State Hershey Medical Center, who argued that Pennsylvania wouldn’t be seeing an average of 960 new COVID-19 cases per day, as it has in the last week, if it had a robust system of tracers. 

Protest2_car

As it eyes reopening, Pa. doesn’t have a plan for contact tracing. Here’s what that means and why it matters.

BY: - April 22, 2020

As Gov. Tom Wolf prepares to lift stay-at-home orders and some business closings, the state’s public health response remains stymied at every stage.