The University of Houston is now training 'Disease Detectives' to help fight COVID-19.
The school is offering students, a free, online course to become a 'contact tracer. Dr. Bettina Beech, U-H associate provost for planning and strategic initiatives and associate dean for research at the College of Medicine, tells KTRH they are working on this program with officials from the city of Houston and Harris County.
"They will have the opportunity to go through a self-paced, online program for contact tracing. It's about a 12-hour program," Beech said.
Beech also says the students who complete the course will have the chance to put their new knowledge to use immediately.
"There's a cadre of individuals that are needed," she explained. Over 4,000 is the estimate of how many contact tracers are needed in the state."
The county plans to hire 300 contact tracers, as does the city. The United States will need more than 100,000 tracers to help the fight against the virus.