CHICAGO (WLS) — With more than a million people unemployed in Illinois, here’s a job you can do to be a real asset to your community and you don’t need any prior experience. It’s COVID-19 contact tracing, and by making a few calls, you could save lives and get paid.
The city of Chicago is expected to hire 600 contact tracers and is willing to pay them at least $20 an hour. Governor Pritzker also wants nearly 4,000 contact tracers for the state of Illinois.
So what do they do?
Contact tracers are like detectives. They talk to a people infected with COVID-19 about where they’ve been (at work, the store, out in public) and who they may have come into contact with to try and get as many people exposed to the coronavirus to isolate and stop the spread.
“I’m like CSI contact tracing, fantastic,” said nursing student Rhett Buckley.
Buckley is training online right now to become a contact tracer through a new program at Oakton Community College in Des Plaines.
“You ha