Missouri health departments strain to maintain contact tracing

ST. LOUIS (AP) – Local health departments in Missouri don’t have enough staffers to conduct contact tracing for all of the COVID-19 cases popping up.

As a result, they have been prioritizing the ones they try to trace back to their sources.

Contact tracing helps health officials determine where virus cases are spreading.

Larry Jones with the Missouri Center for Public Health Excellence says there are more virus cases than contact tracers can keep up with.

Missouri on Sunday reported 4,131 new confirmed cases of COVID-19 and three more deaths from the disease caused by the coronavirus.

That pushed its death toll since the pandemic began to 3,153.