Print article Back in November, with COVID-19 cases surging and the state’s contact tracing corps overwhelmed, officials implored people testing positive to reach out on their own to the people they might have infected. But, now Alaska’s contact tracing effort is rebounding after several months of hiring and several weeks of decreased daily cases. At the moment, once contact tracers are notified of the new positive, they’ll reach out within the day, said Tim Struna, who heads up the section of public health nursing for Alaska. It takes on average statewide around three days between the time someone might pull into a drive-through testing site and get their nose swabbed to when a contact tracer calls them.