Editor’s note: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated the number of deaths confirmed on Tuesday. Health officials confirmed 12 coronavirus-related deaths Tuesday.

After confirming 12 additional deaths related to the coronavirus, Delaware announced on Tuesday the start of a statewide contact tracing program designed to limit the virus’s spread as the state gradually reopens businesses.

Officials also confirmed 176 more cases in Delaware, raising the state’s tally to 6,741.

Through the contact tracing program, Delaware will reach out to those who test positive and attempt to identify everyone who came within 6 feet of them for more than 10 minutes in the days prior.

The program builds on the state’s expanded testing, announced late last week, that will see up to 80,000 Delawareans tested every month. The goal is to continue protecting Delaware’s vulnerable populations by countering fewer social distancing restrictions with greater testing and tracing over the coming weeks, Gov. John Carney said at a press briefing Tuesday.

“It’s really isolating the individuals who are COVID-19 positive and their contacts as opposed to isolating the whole community,” Carney said.

It also comes as retailers start welcoming back customers through curbside pickup and the Delaware beaches, most notably Rehoboth Beach, prepare to reopen reopen their beaches and boardwalks for exercise.

The state will be hiring about 200 Delawareans to serve as contact tracers. As the operation ramps up, a process Dr. Karyl Rattay of the Division of Public Health says will take about a month, 100 members of the Delaware National Guard will start the program. They began training on Monday.

Delawareans who have tested positive for COVID-19 should receive a phone call from a case investigator asking for information on whom they came in contact with.

Contact tracers will then reach out to each known contact to tell them to quarantine, help them make alternate quarantine arrangements if necessary, and arrange testing if recommended.

NORC at the University of Chicago, a nonpartisan research institution, will build programs for Delaware and Maryland, allowing the states to share information.

Carney said the program will cost “a lot,” but that the state doesn’t have an exact number currently. It will be paid for through the funding Delaware received from the federal government through the coronavirus aid bill.

In reopening guidance from the White House and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, expanded testing and contract tracing are listed as the primary keys, yet Delaware announced its program two months after its first known case.

The program is one of the most complex Rattay said she’s seen in public health. She added that she thought it would take longer to come together.

“We know we can’t stay at home forever,” Rattay said. “We’ve never ramped up contact tracing like we are now.”

The Division of Public Health had a small contact tracing team in early March working on the coronavirus, but the team was overwhelmed as Delaware quickly reached community spread.

The state believes it’s past the stage of “putting out wildfires,” as Carney put it, and can now begin working to identify asymptomatic carriers in vulnerable groups like nursing homes and essential front-line workers.

Almost half the state’s cases are in Sussex County where the rate of infection in Sussex County is more than triple that of New Castle County, the state’s most populous county.

Sussex has been plagued, in large part, by its chicken processing plants where workers operate in close quarters. In Hispanic and Haitian immigrant communities, health care workers, advocates and elected officials say those residents can face additional challenges, including language barriers.

“It’s going to be really important that [contact tracers] are from the communities in which they are working,” Rattay said.