The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ( CDC ) is deploying a team of specialists to Imperial County.

According to the Imperial County Public Health Department ( ICPHD ) , the CDC team will provide support for contact tracing , bi-national case investigations , hospital infection prevention and control and reporting data management , and planning. The five-member team , which started arriving this week , will include epidemiologists and others. 

The County Public Health Department is participating in a new state program called CalCONNECT for case investigation and contact tracing. More than a dozen local case investigators will be aided by 10 bilingual case investigators and 10 bilingual contact tracers to investigate cases , identify contacts to those cases and follow up with contacts. 

Paula Kriner , ICPHD Epidemiology Manager said , " Our department welcomes the additional support from CDC. This is an unprecedented time for our community and having the assistance from our federal partners allows us to continue to serve our community with the highest level of professionalism that they deserve as e respond to the pandemic."