Newark is ramping up its contact tracing. It already has been ramping up testing to flatten the curve for coronavirus infections in New Jersey’s largest city.

“In order to do that successfully, you have to have contact tracers that are able to chase down the virus and begin to separate people who are sick from those who are not sick,” said Newark Mayor Ras Baraka.

The Baraka administration laid out its plan for contact tracing. It gets its cases from the state Department of Health. Newark’s disease investigators find out who was around the infectious person. Then, an army of mostly recently-trained volunteers begins calling and emailing all those potentially exposed to gauge if they too have the virus. If necessary, they encouraging testing and monitoring or isolating.

“If we are interviewing someone and they need further resources, these contact tracers are able to provide those resources. We also have bilingual contact tracers available as well. And of course, we have special investigators to tackle long-term care facilities, the prisons and the shelters,” said Newark Chief Disease Investigator Berylyne Vilcant.

The city has some 20 disease investigators and anticipates getting another 20. Through city agencies and partners Newark has some 200 contact tracers.

“Contact tracing has always been done by disease investigators, but now with COVID we’ve had to bring on an army of support,” said Dr. Mark Wade, director of the Newark Heath and Community Wellness Department.

“When war is going on, sometimes you have to give the medic a gun,” Baraka said.

The city’s goal is for each disease investigator to pursue 25 cases a day.

The city’s Health and Community Wellness Department is leading a team of partners that includes Rutgers Global Health, the economic revitalization nonprofit the Newark Alliance, and Partners In Health, which led contact tracing fighting Ebola and describes its global mission as both “medical and moral.”

“Based on an editorial that I read before, they said that one missed contact tracing can undo weeks of social distancing, so it’s important for us to have the right people chasing this down,” the mayor said.

Newark’s population tops 280,000. The city estimates it needs 75 to 80 tracers per 100,000 residents. Wade says local medical and nursing school students have committed to join the contact tracing team.

The mayor says Newark can’t afford to wait on big tech companies to develop apps to get the job done because contact tracing plays a major role in deciding when to reopen the city. And while statistics show new cases are declining in Newark, the mayor answered why Newark remains closed while Jersey City has been relaxing restrictions.

“In Newark, we’re predominantly black, and Latino, and immigrant and this virus is killing us more than it’s killing anybody else,” Baraka said. “I just came from Cotton Funeral Home. They have over 80 bodies in the building that they have not removed in over weeks that are still in the Cotton Funeral Home today — right now. Right now because they can’t get the cemeteries to move quick enough to pull the bodies out and bury them in a cemetery. It’s a ridiculous situation, so,I don’t have the luxury to say, ‘Hey, let’s go play volleyball.”