Governor Jay Inslee said Tuesday that Washington has nearly 1,400 trained contact-tracing personnel who are now reaching out to every new person who tests positive for coronavirus, in an effort to track down other people they may have infected.

Inslee said the team is an essential part of a three-pronged approach to locking down the virus: broad-based testing, isolation and contact tracing.

This is how it works: When a person tests positive, they will be called by a designated contact tracer, he said. The tracer will ask where the person has been and with whom they’ve been in contact. They’ll then call those people — ideally within two days — telling each person they’ve been in contact with someone who tested positive for novel coronavirus and then ask them to self-quarantine until they can be tested themselves — and hopefully test negative.

“It is supremely important to our ability to reopen our economy and our businesses while simultaneously protecting our health,” Inslee said.

Washington state will have 1,371 trained contact tracers — 630 local and state Department of Health officials, 390 from the state Department of Licensing and 351 from the National Guard. 

Inslee said he was confident this number of contact tracers was sufficient. The DOH reports 200 to 300 new cases each day, which has been consistent for the past several weeks.

Inslee explained this is standard operating procedure for local health departments for many decades, as they’ve tried to tamp down outbreaks of diseases like tuberculosis and hepatitis, but “on a much grander scale.”

Contact tracing at the county level became too daunting of a task for local jurisdictions, and this is why the state is adding so many personnel to complete the task at hand.

Inslee urged Washingtonians to isolate at the first sign of symptoms and said people who do test positive should stay isolated for 14 days, as should their families. 

The governor said that someone will check in daily on people who have tested positive and are quarantining, either by phone or by text.

“We have to depend upon the sense of commitment and compassion that Washingtonians have to make this work,” Inslee said.

He said contact tracers have been carefully screened and have signed confidentiality agreements. They’re not supposed to inquire about immigration status, Social Security numbers or marital status.

OLYMPIA, WA — Gov. Jay Inslee announced today that ‘non-essential’ retail stores could reopen with curbside pickup, landscapers and pet walkers are able to work, and five smaller counties will begin to reopen more quickly.

All of the industry sectors Inslee listed in the first part of his four-phase plan to reopen the state are now able to resume business with some restrictions.

Despite the positive news, Inslee also warned that a key public-health number — the transmission rate of COVID-19 — is getting slightly worse.

The latest report from the Bellevue-based Institute for Disease Modeling (IDM) showed that the estimated infection rate — which projects how many others an infected person infects — had risen slightly in Western Washington, and in King County.

“We are making progress in this fight,” Inslee said. “But I am very concerned about the situation we’re in today, despite that progress. Because we just are in a very precarious situation, we’re sort of poised on that knife edge of whether we’re really going to wrestle this all the way to the ground.”

The latest Washington Department of Health report brings Washington’s totals to 16,388 positive cases and 905 deaths. To-date, 235,835 Washingtonians have had COVID-19 tests. Approximately 6.9% are positive.

Inslee said that retail stores considered non-essential could start offering customers curbside services.

Businesses are mandated to keep employees and customers more than six feet apart during interactions, and screen employees for COVID-like symptoms. The guidance does not allow in-store retail activity for businesses considered nonessential.

Other safety guidelines issued Friday allow landscaping and outdoor workers to return to work, including pet walkers.