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These area codes could save your life
By Steve Krause | April 28, 2020
If you get a phone call and the area codes “857 or 833” pop up on your caller ID, you’d best answer. It might not only save your life, but it might be the difference between life and death for friends and loved ones too.
Those are the two area codes the Massachusetts Community Tracking Collaborative are calling from in the effort that Gov. Charlie Baker has put forth in its attempts to slow the spread of COVID-19.
The tracking collaborative is being undertaken under the coordination of the Mass. Health Connector, which is basically the marketplace for acquiring health insurance. If tracking the source of a pandemic and health insurance don’t seem directly connected, Jason Lefferts, a spokesman for the collaborative, explains.
“It’s all hands on deck when it comes to something like this,” Lefferts said.
Baker announced the plan earlier this month during one of his daily updates on the state’s fight against the coronavirus.
“Contact tracing has been going on for a long time,” Lefferts said. “It’s especially important in this case, as people are getting sick after coming in contact with someone else.
“We want to get in touch with those people who are confirmed to have the virus and talk to them. First, we want them to stay home. We ask them if there’s anything they need in order to stay home. We can be helpful with food, and to help them get what they need.
“Then, we ask that they think back and tell us who they’ve been in contact with, and to give us phone numbers.”
Lefferts said the collaborative, whose phone callers work out of their homes, has a central computer repository it calls “Maven” that stores all the names of confirmed victims.
“We ask them to tell us who they’ve seen recently, and we call all those people to tell them they’ve been in contact with someone who’s known to have this, and tell them they might want to get tested.”
Lefferts said those people are also told they should stay home.
“We want to make sure we don’t spread this virus any further,” he said. “I think if we look at it, this is another tool along with social distancing. I think we all know social distancing works. This will be another piece of that.”
Lefferts said that if the tracking system remains in place, and is proven successful, it might blunt the effect of any mass relapse of the COVID-19 virus in the fall.
“If we can get on the phone with someone who has been exposed that wasn’t aware of it, we can keep people from further the spreading of the disease, now and in the fall.”
Once Baker announced the formation of the collaborative, the project swiftly began taking shape. By April 12, the first calls were being made and as of Friday, the collaborative has close to 700 people in its virtual call center. They have contacted about 4,200 people.
“We expect to be fully up and running in the next week or so,” he said.
Many of those making the calls were recently laid off from work as a result of the social distancing policies instituted by Baker and other governors.
“We are obviously concerned about people who have lost their jobs, and have lost their health insurance,” Lefferts said. “We encourage people who have lost jobs to sign up for the health connector. We want people to take advantage of it.”
Obviously, said Lefferts, this program will only be as successful as the people being contacted.
“We need people to pick up their phones,” he said. “So if you see a phone call with (those two area codes) that says ‘MA COVID-19 TEAM,’ please answer it. We will leave a message saying that someone who has this disease listed them as someone they’d been with recently, and we’ll tell them we’ll call back.
Lefferts said thus far, people have been helpful.
“One of the most interesting things is that people we’ve spoken with list, on average, two people they’ve seen. We take that as a good sign — that people are paying attention to social distancing.”
Lefferts said the program will stay in effect long after this wave of the pandemic recedes.