Commissioners agreed June 16 to lease 27,500 square feet of office space about a mile west of Parkland Memorial Hospital for the Dallas County Department of Health and Human Services.
The lease, which will begin July 1, will provide space for a call center staff to reach out to people who may have come into contact with an infected person. The staff will then verify whether these contacts have COVID-19 symptoms and encourage them to isolate themselves, according to county documents.
“These actions are crucial in this medical crisis and will be helpful to healthcare officials as the virus is tracked within Dallas County,” county health staff said in a memo accompanying the lease proposal.
The money for the lease is provided through the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act, the federal stimulus law that included aid for state and local governments as they respond to the pandemic.
The county also approved an agreement to partner with Parkland staff to conduct contact tracing interviews on behalf of the county, to provide social worker support to people identified by county health officials and to help the county work with the associated data.
The county will also provide Parkland with its own data about known and suspected COVID-19 cases for the purposes of reducing the spread of the virus.
