2. North Dakota to resume contact tracing as COVID-19 case count shrinks Employees doing contact tracing for people with COVID-19 and others who may have been exposed to them are shown recently at Fargo Cass Public Health in Fargo. Special to The Forum With new COVID-19 infections on the decline, North Dakota health officials plan to resume full contact tracing operations this week. The return of the foundational disease control strategy comes more than two months after the state became overwhelmed by mounting cases of the virus and abandoned most contact tracing efforts. The state Department of Health and local public health units in Fargo and Grand Forks have since been asking residents who test positive for COVID-19 to inform their own close contacts of the diagnosis.