The $ 10 million corona virus tracking program from Empire State – spearheaded by former billionaire mayor Mike Bloomberg – has so far employed a small proportion of committed people, according to state Health Department data.
Governor Andrew Cuomo last month knocked Bloomberg as his coronavirus-tracing czar – announcing a failed Democratic presidential candidate would orchestrate a program that would eventually employ between 6,000 and 17,000 people.
But four weeks later, a joint initiative between the Cuomo office and Bloomberg Philanthropies had successfully trained and recruited only 2,164 trackers, a DOH spokesman confirmed.
4,000 more people are in the pipeline, he said.
At an April 22 press conference in Albany, Cuomo announced Bloomberg would “coordinate all efforts” and told reporters that he wanted it up and running in a few weeks.
“You don’t have a month to plan and do this,” he said.
Top aide Melissa DeRosa said the Bloomberg public health program at John Hopkins will create an online curriculum and, with the governor’s office, train, recruit, interview and conduct background checks on trackers.
But Joshua Sharfstein, deputy dean for public health practices and community involvement at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told The Post that they were responsible for only training people – not hiring or screening what they said was handed over to the state government.
“We play a very narrow role. We just want to make a basic course for people to understand the basics of COVID-19, “Sharfstein said.
When asked if the school fed graduates to the state government, he replied: “We don’t do that. We only do courses. “
A Cuomo spokesman said whatever allegations they had left behind their targets were “absolutely wrong” and retaliated to their own health department figures.
“When we launched a joint initiative with Bloomberg Philanthropies, we said that we would need a range from 6,400 to 17,000 trackers across the state,” said spokesman Jason Cornwall.
“We already have more than 6,100 trackers on the streets and another 4,000 who have completed training and are in the process of a final interview,” he continued.
However, the health ministry confirmed that only 2,164 local and state trackers had been reassigned to seven regions of the Imperial State that had been reopened because COVID-19 cases in hard-hit states continued to decline.
An important part of reopening, contact tracers act as disease detectives by tracking people who have crossed pathways with confirmed coronavirus patients to inform them that they may need to take isolation precautions.
Another Cuomo spokesman insisted that they were right on target because New York City had not yet reopened and said they might not need 17,000 trackers at all.
The state health department has included more than 50,000 applicants and said more people are employed every day in roles that pay $ 27 per hour.
Sharfstein also said more than 200,000 people had taken the John Hopkins corona virus tracking course, which is free and available to anyone.
Last week, The Post revealed how SUNY students applied for what they thought were paid positions with the state Health Department as a coronavirus tracker, only to be notified after the fact that the show was not paid.
New York City has its own tracking program – Mayor Bill de Blasio announced on Wednesday that 1.70 contact tracers will be ready to work next week.
