New York (AFP)

It is supposed to be one of the key weapons to stem the pandemic and revive the economy: for a month, the American authorities speak of the need to hire an "army" of agents to follow and isolate the people exposed to the coronavirus. But their recruitment has barely begun and their task promises to be daunting.

When questioned by a parliamentary committee, director of the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC) Robert Redfield reiterated on Tuesday that "tracing" - which involves calling anyone who has been in contact with a person who tested positive and telling him asking to quarantine - was "essential to stop the chains of transmission (of the virus) and prevent further spread".

Since mid-April, the governor of New York, the state most affected by the new coronavirus, discusses the hiring of 6,000 to 17,000 tracing agents.

For the whole of the United States, experts estimate the needs for at least 100,000 agents, even with the applications that are developing to automatically trace the movements of the population by geolocation.

However, in most American states, which must each develop their tracking program, the hiring of these agents is just starting.

With unemployment exploding, the candidates are already in the thousands, but the tracing in New York should not begin before the beginning of June, the date announced by the town hall to complete the training of 1,000 agents.

"A lot has to be in place before tracing can start," Andrew Chan, professor of public health at Harvard University, told AFP.

We need agents in number, but also tests in sufficient quantity to quickly detect all people exposed to the virus and offer them places to spend their quarantine if their home does not lend itself to it.

"The absence of a coherent federal strategy", notes the expert, has created "a patchwork of efforts" undertaken by the 50 American states, far from the centralized process which facilitates the sharing of information established in South Korea or envisaged in France.

This creates "a lot of chaos and confusion," he says.

- "Do not scare"

Once the agents are operational, the magnitude of the task can be daunting.

In the state of Massachusetts, a pioneer in the organization of tracing, the "tracers" have found that "the conversation is neither simple nor rapid when they contact someone who has tested positive", underlines Mr. Chan .

"It takes time to ease their anxiety related to the positive result and detail the consequences," he says.

Especially since in this state, as in many others, the black and Hispanic minorities are the most affected. Some of them speak little English and risk immediate unemployment in the event of quarantine.

Julian Drix, investigator since March in the small neighboring state of Rhode Island, confirms this: many of the "traced" people are undocumented, fear any contact with the authorities, and require the use of interpreters or bilingual agents who are still insufficient.

"It takes longer to get the info and build trust (...) We don't want to scare them," he says, noting that many agents work "10 to 12 hours a day, six to seven days a week. "

The work may seem "so titanic that it can be an obstacle to launching the tracing", notes Mr. Chan.

Whatever the obstacles, and the unresolved question of the financing of tracing by States whose tax revenues have melted with the pandemic, "there is no alternative", underlines Marcus Plescia, medical manager of ASTHO , an association which brings together health officials from American states.

"If we don't set up tracing on a large scale, the virus will come back in force," he believes. And when agents are operational across the country, cooperating with them and accepting quarantine will become "a societal obligation", even if it will necessarily cause "frustration".

© 2020 AFP