The founder of a contact tracing firm that's fielded 80,000 job applications in 5 weeks describes what he's looking for in an applicant

• Public health experts say the US needs an "army" of contact tracers who can help contain coronavirus outbreaks by tracking down everyone patients have come into contact with.
• in late April, CONTRACE Public Health Corps was launched to help with the nation's contact tracing needs. They've already fielded 80,000 applicants.
• The US has gone from 2,200 contact tracers nationwide to 36,000 since the coronavirus began to spread, but CONTRACE co-founded Steve Waters believes the country will need between 100,000 and 300,000.
• Waters told Business Insider successful contact tracers are empathetic, enjoy talking on the phone, and are adept at talking to people in times of crisis.

A company that was established fewer than five weeks ago and has already received nearly 80,000 job applications shows just how much the coronavirus is reshaping the world.

CONTRACE Public Health Corps, a social enterprise headquartered in Washington, D.C., since April 22, is the brainchild of social entrepreneur Steve Waters. He created it in response to the coronavirus pandemic, which has so far infected more than 1.7 million Americans and killed at least 102,000, according to Johns Hopkins data.

"Based on the massive scale of contact tracing efforts needed to safely reopen the economy, I was surprised that there wasn't a national contact tracing strategy or a centralized resource where the tens of thousands of individuals needed to perform this work could register their interest in contact tracing," Waters said of the company's genesis.

CONTRACE is a two-man show: Waters and Matt Leger, the senior director of strategy, who are working seven days a week.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say contract tracing is "a key strategy for preventing further spread of COVID-19." As "part of a multipronged approach" to tackle the pandemic, staff work with patients "to help them recall everyone with whom they have had close contact during the timeframe while they may have been infectious."

Contact tracers "rapidly and sensitively" convey this information to anyone who may been exposed to the virus, without revealing who exactly they came in contact with, according to the CDC.

Empathy, compassion, and being able to talk to people in times of crisis are crucial for contact tracers

CONTRACE comes into play by helping to identify and screen people who want to work as contract tracers and then connecting them with organizations that are building contact-tracing teams.

"People who are in close contact with someone infected with COVID-19 are more likely to get infected themselves, and then also potentially infect others," Waters said. "But [by] identifying close contacts and encouraging them to self-quarantine, you can use a targeted approach that helps prevent further spread of the virus."

The goal is to help "safely reopen the US economy," he said, and "connect Americans with jobs that are both desperately needed and critical to public health."

Contact tracers can earn $18 to $25 an hour, depending on where they're located. People with backgrounds in nursing, public health, medicine, and social work are preferred.

Waters said he looks for candidates that demonstrate "strong interpersonal skills, empathy and compassion." It's also beneficial if they speak multiple languages.

Bottom line: It's essential that a contact tracer feel "comfortable talking to people in a time of crisis," Waters said.

Once they are hired, he said "contact tracers spend their days on the phone."

Waters believes that "there is definitely an art to contact tracing" because "gaining the trust of someone you have cold-called can be challenging, particularly individuals with paranoid, conspiratorial or anti-government attitudes."

'Cultural literacy' helps facilitate effective communication with groups severely impacted by the pandemic

Waters urges organizations to hire locally, and to ensure that contact tracers belong to communities that are hard-hit by the pandemic. These groups tend to be plagued by high poverty and unemployment rates, and a lack of education and housing, Fast Company reported.

According to the Economic Innovation Group's Distressed Communities Index, 50 million Americans call distressed communities home, while 86.5 million residents live in prosperous communities. Minorities — who represent 38% of the US population — make up 56% of the population in distressed communities.

The pandemic has exacerbated the challenges these groups face.

For instance, research shows that black Americans are coming down with COVID-19 and dying at disproportionately high rates. Counties in which at least 13% of residents are black — which make up 22% of US counties — account for 52% of the nation's coronavirus cases and 58% of its fatalities, according to amfAR, a non-profit that works on HIV prevention and AIDS research.

To that end, Waters said state and local organizations should "prioritize a percentage of contact tracing jobs be allotted to residents of distressed communities."

This can help in two ways.

First, it can provide some "badly needed economic relief" in the form of jobs. Second, it ensures that contact tracers have the necessary cultural literacy to be able to communicate with the people they're tasked with helping.

"For contact tracers to be effective, they need to gain the trust of the people they are calling, and be viewed as the ally that they are — someone that is looking out for the recipient of the call and the community they live in," Waters said. "To increase the likelihood of that process being successful, tracers should have a strong cultural understanding of the people in the communities they are contacting."

Waters has integrated the Distressed Communities Index with CONTRACE's applicant database to help employers pin-point residents in these hard-hit areas.

"Having tracers from these areas is important," he said. "We're not suggesting that organizations exclusively hire tracers from distressed communities, rather that they should ensure that residents of those communities are included in their overall hiring mix."

Politics shouldn't overshadow the need for contact tracing

The US as a whole only had 2,200 contact tracers when the coronavirus hit. Waters said that number is now up to 36,000, but the need ranges from 100,000 to 300,000, especially since the US has the worst outbreak on Earth.

Waters believes the country will "end up near the top of that spectrum" since "the likelihood of proximity-tracking contact-tracing apps being widely adopted in the US is quite low, which will increase the need for human contact tracing."

He added: "People who are in close contact with someone infected with COVID-19 are more likely to get infected themselves, and then also potentially infect others. But [by] identifying close contacts and encouraging them to self-quarantine, you can use a targeted approach that helps prevent further spread of the virus.

Health experts agree.

They have said reopening the country safely relies on widespread testing and contacting tracing to reduce the spread of the coronavirus. Johns Hopkins University and the University of Houston are even offering free online courses to teach people how to become contact tracers.

However, concerns about privacy and civil liberties have dogged key public health tools like stay-at-home orders and contact tracing.

"Contact information can be abused by immigration authorities, by law enforcement, advertising companies and potentially stalkers or other abusers," Jennifer Lee, the technology and liberty project managers at ACLU of Washington, told KOMO News.

CONTRACE doesn't have access to patient information because it is helping to set up and expand contact tracing teams. But Waters believes that "the utmost care should be taken to protect patient privacy, and that any organizations with access to patient information should be held to the highest privacy standards that govern them."

That said, those who participate in contact tracing do so of their own volition, he said.

"This is not an effort to control people," Waters said. "It's a voluntary effort to reduce the transmission of a highly infectious virus in your community. I'm hopeful that is something that we can all get behind, regardless of our views on politics or government."