The Virus Trackers

An experimental vaccine is showing promising results in a small study of a drug made by the biotech firm Moderna. Patients immune systems were triggered to create a response to fight off the virus. The news is reason for cautious optimism that the global efforts to combat the pandemic will

eventually succeed. The results are just a sample from the initial study, and the small study is designed to look at how safe it is to inject the drug into volunteers, but the study does suggest there are no major safety worries. That's a key hurdle to clear, since a vaccine would be given to millions of otherwise healthy people. Moderna is moving ahead with plans for a larger test to determine the right dose, as well as a phase three test

with many thousands of patients. China will make its coronavirus vaccine a global public good once one is available, according to President Jane Payne, g spoke to the World Health Organization's governing body. As concerns grow that countries will put their own interests first in the quest to stem the virus, the w h O was pushing a proposal that aims to ensure broad access to COVID nineteen treatments and vaccines

while offering an appropriate reward to creators. Also in China, some one and eight million people in the countries northeast are being forced back into lockdown. A new and growing cluster of infections there has caused a backslide and the nation's return to normal in an abrupt reversal of the reopening across the country. Cities in Jilin Province have caught off trains and buses, shot schools, and quarantine tens of

thousands of people. While the cluster of thirty four infections isn't growing as quickly as the outbreak in Wuhan that started the global pandemic last December, China's swift and powerful reaction reflects its fear of a second wave. Finally, in Florida, one of severn world u S states where businesses are starting to reopen, the state reported a larger than average increase in new infections. Florida is expanding its reopening today to include Miami Dade and Broward, the two most populous

and hardest hit counties. Elsewhere, Governor Rohn de Santis is loosening restrictions further. Retailers and restaurants will be allowed to have customers inside at fifty capacity, up from in the initial phase of reopening. And now our main story. As countries around the world try to figure out how to live with the virus, a very old public health strategy is on everybody's mind. Contact tracing. This is the laborious process of tracking down everybody that a coronavirus patient might

have infected. It's tedious and time consuming, but irreplaceable if you want to stop a disease from spreading. The World Health Organization has specifically praised one country for its contact tracing practices, Germany. The country has about a quarter of the deaths of neighboring France. Despite a more flexible lockdown. Last weekend, it continued its cautious move towards pandemic normalcy

by letting restaurants reopen. Bloomberg reporter Naomi Kraski takes us to Wurtzburg, a region about an hour east of Frankfurt, to see what Germany is getting right about contact tracing m okay. Our story starts with Joachim Lazar. Infections were never his specialty. Joakim, who was thirty nine years old, is a social worker, not a doctor. But when the new coronavirus swept into Wurtzburg, Germany, in early March, he found himself in the thick of the war against it.

He's one of the city's contact tracers. It's like detective work. When someone in Wurtzburg tests positive for the virus, Letzariic interviews them to uncover any trail of illness they might have left in their wake. Under that, I'm a kind you can't make any mistakes. You have to ask things like, for example, whether they're living in a small apartment, are you living with your partner and children? Is your grandmother also living there? Is it a large family? And then

at work, did you take part in a meeting. Did you smoke a cigarette with someone on your break? Do you work at a hospital? For us, everything is important and you have to follow up very carefully. Unlike the US, UK and most other countries, Germany never gave up on contact tracing, even as infection is ballooned. Thanks to some of the world's toughest privacy laws, the country's three hundred and seventy five local health authorities could not rely on

digital surveillance for help. Instead, they recruited everyone from medical students to firefighters. These contact tracers spend untold hours on the phone. Together with a lot of testing and the luck of having the German outbreak spread first and younger and healthier people, contact tracers are one of the big reasons why Germany has about one third as many coronavirus

deaths per capita as the US. Mike Ryan, executive director of the who's Emergencies Program, recently praised Germany's testing and tracing. He said it puts the country in a good position to suppress the new infection clusters that inevitably will pop up as it emerges from lockdown, and he had a warning for those that are not putting in the same effort.

Shoving your eyes and I'm trying to drive through this blind is about as silly an equation as I've seen, And I'm really concerned that certain countries are saving serves up for some seriously blind driving over the next few months. U S States are putting together their own armies of contact tracers right now, but they're starting late in the game. By all accounts, the country will need more than one hundred thousand people like litz Artic, at a total cost

in the billions. Utzburg is a case study for why that would be a worthwhile investment. Its first two virus cases emerged on March fourth, in people who had just returned from Italy. Infections mushroomed from there a young couple, a student and teacher who had been on a trip to the Alps, a handful of other school children. Most worryingly, the virus emerged in a local nursing home. On March twelve.

An eighty three year old resident of that facility became the coronavirus is first victim in Bavaria and among the first in Germany. The health authority staff were already making calls begin at the beginning. There were actually only a few people doing the investigating, and then because the numbers were rising so high, we all started doing nothing but tracing. At first, it was like playing a public health version of Whackamore, Lazark and the other contact tracers to get

their day's cases. During an early morning meeting, the positive the positive tests went to the tracing team, and then the tracing team would get to the phone. Because these people had been tested, we had their contact detests and in the conversations. The first order of business was to inform to inform people that they've had a positive test, and then to inform them about what that means to them. We had to tell them to isolate. People who test

positive aren't allowed to leave the house. But then another big piece, something that is very important to me, is to give them information and try. They used a simple definition for contacts, everyone with whom an infected person was face to face for more than fifteen minutes starting two days before their symptoms began. These contacts also have to be called, told to quarantine and asked to track their health and write down any encounters, even something as fleeting

as a package delivery person coming to the door. If they developed symptoms, they're tested, and for those who test positive, a tracer goes back to the beginning to investigate that person's contact chain. In the early weeks, the case is piled up. On March twenty, when Bavarian Premier Marcus Suder put the state into lockdown, Fittzburg had fifty four new infections. By early April. Ltzarik and his colleagues were working flat out. He soon found himself leading a team of other tracers.

Then it did happen that we were doing the investigating for six or seven days a week and sometimes up to fourteen hours a day. They recruited medical students, youth welfare officers, and administrators from other agencies to double the number of tracers on the phones. Other recruits managed the tide of paperwork and data entry. They got a real database instead of makeshift Excel spreadsheets, counting everybody, including doctors, to manage who goes into and out of quarantine. The

team swelled more than one hundred people. Let's Ardrek started training the new recruits. We look really closely at every single case and we talked together on the team about how to proceed. But slowly, social distancing started to reduce the number of contacts that had to be traced. On April, for the first time, there were no new virus cases

to distribute in the morning meeting. By May fourteen, the team had released more than two thousand, five hundred people from quarantine and more than seven hundred of the areas, eight hundred and sixty nine virus cases had recovered, fifty nine people had died. Wurtzburg is just one small cog in the German contact tracing machine. On a federal level, Germany has said its aiming for one team of five tracers per twenty thou inhabitants, which works out to almost

twenty one thousand tracers nationwide. There are some challenges, though The government has earmarked fifty million euros for a technology update. Critics say that's not enough, and a promised app to identify potential contacts based on cell phone proximity has yet to materialize. As Germany slowly eases restrictions on public life, Litzotic and other contact tracers are far from finished with

their work. The number of German cases has picked up slightly, driven by local outbreaks and meatpacking plants and nursing homes. Chancellor Angela mercle said last week that health authorities will be the deciding point for whether these chains of infections can be followed and shut down. I can tell you that committed people are working there. They will manage this task and we will provide the necessary back up together with the States. That was Naomi Krasky in Berlin, And

that's our show today. For coverage of the outbreak from one and twenty bureaus around the world, visit Bloomberg dot com slash Coronavirus and if you like the show, please leave us a review and a rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It's the best way to help more listeners find our global reporting. The Prognosis Daily edition is produced by Tover Foreheads, Jordan's as Pure, Magnus Henriksson, and me Laura Carlson. Today's main story was reported by Naomi Kresky.

Special thanks to Philip Corn and Karen Matusik. Original music by Leo Citrin. Our editors are Francesca Levi and Rick Shine. Francesca Levi is Bloomberg's head of podcasts. Thanks for listening.