America’s Health Departments Finally Get Software to Track Cases

As states and cities begin to think about reopening their economies, the public-health workers who will be responsible for keeping the coronavirus under control are facing an unprecedented challenge: how to track and isolate thousands of people exposed to a disease that spreads with remarkable efficiency.

For years, state and local health authorities have relied on Excel spreadsheets, pencil and paper, emails and phone calls to deal with outbreaks of measles, sexually transmitted diseases and other communicable infections. But with more than 800,000 confirmed cases of Covid-19 in the U.S., that’s not enough. A new software tool called Sara Alert, developed by a federally funded nonprofit, aims to ...