City Ramping Up Contact Tracing Efforts; Free Online Contact Tracing Course Available

CHICAGO (CBS)-- On Tuesday, Mayor Lori Lightfoot will lay out the city's plan to ramp up contact tracing efforts for COVID-19 cases in Chicago.

The pandemic has created a huge need for contact tracing positions.

There's a free online class starting Tuesday for anyone interested in learning how to be a contact tracer.

A contact tracer is someone who gathers information from COVID-19 positive patients about who they've been around and location they visited. Tracers then try to contact the people involved and let them know.

A five-hour free course from Johns Hopkins University is available online.

Students will learn everything from how COVID-19 is transmitted from person-to-person to how to investigate a case.

This month, some Chicago South Side residents have been pushing for contact tracing in their neighborhoods, which have been hit hard by COVID-19. Representative Bobby Rush has introduced a bill that would create a $100 billion funding stream for health centers, nonprofits and universities to beef up the country's tracing, training and testing.

It's called the Trace Act.  Rush said the goal is to make sure people in hard-hit minority communities get trained on contact tracing.