'Are you doing OK?': On the ground with NYC contact tracers

NEW YORK (AP) — Joseph Ortiz headed for the home of a stranger who tested positive for COVID-19, unsure how his unexpected visit would go.

The person hadn't answered phone calls from New York City's contact tracing program, a massive effort to keep the coronavirus from spreading by getting newly diagnosed people to identify others they might have infected before those people spread it further.

Ortiz was out to try to bring the person into the fold.

“It's a mixed bag. You never know what you're going to get," Ortiz, 30, said as he approached the person's Queens apartment building this month. “Sometimes you have people who are really appreciative....They like that we're out here trying to end the pandemic so everyone can get back to normal.”

“But other times, you might have a client who slams the door.”

Such is the on-the-ground work of what appears to be the biggest contact tracing effort in any U.S. city, with over 3,000 people making calls, knocking on doors and checking in on people's health and sequestration.

Mayor Bill de Blasio, a Democrat, has credited the effort with “so far, amazing success.” After a knotty June start, the city says it's now meeting its goal of reaching about 90% of all newly diagnosed people and completing interviews with 75%.

But in the program's first two months, more than 11,000 infected people — over half of all new cases — didn't provide any names of others they might have exposed. When people have identified contacts, tracers have finished interviews with 6 in 10 of them, short of the city's goal. The city has yet to say how quickly it's connecting with people or what it's gleaning about potential sources of exposure.

Comparing U.S. state and city contact tracing programs is difficult because they vary widely in...