Coronavirus contact tracing programs across the U.S. scaled back their ambitions as cases surged in winter, but New York City has leaned into its $600 million tracing initiative. Ad“This is the danger zone, where we can’t let our guard down,” contact tracing chief Dr. Ted Long says. Emmaia Gelman, a graduate student in New York City, said contact tracers called her about 70 times after she tested positive. Philadelphia-based epidemiologist Carolyn Cannuscio saw contact tracing hit its limits as she helped lead Penn Medicine's program. “We shouldn’t just give up and think, ‘Now is not the time for contact tracing,’” she said.

But a neighbor told her the state's rural counties had already moved to younger age groups and she found an appointment 60 miles away. The U.S. vaccine campaign has heightened tensions between rural and urban America, where from Oregon to Tennessee to upstate New York complaints are surfacing of a real — or perceived — inequity in vaccine allocation. In Oregon, state GOP lawmakers walked out of a Legislative session last week over the Democratic governor's vaccine plans, citing rural vaccine distribution among their concerns. Rural counties are less likely to have the deep-freeze equipment necessary to store Pfizer vaccines. The situation caused the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to investigate and the county health director to resign.