"We're in this for the long haul"

Friday 03 April 2020

Public Health is expanding its team of contact tracers - the people who find out who confirmed covid-19 patients have been in contact with - as it ramps up efforts to 'flatten the curve'.

Contact tracers play a vital role in interviewing and mapping the recent movements of people who test positive for the contagious virus.

Someone who tested positive was recently found to have come into contact with 73 people through contact tracers, who are there to try to limit community seeding.

"We have expanded our contact tracing team again, and what has been fantastic is we have managed to train up increasing numbers, the Environmental Health team is located with us, the Health Improvement Commission send people to help us and in fact some of the Deputies are also part of our contact tracing team as well," said Dr Nicola Brink.

"We have trained up a significant number of staff now. [There is] a time where we might decide that we don’t want to do any further contact tracing, but we’re not there, we still need to contact trace: we still need to identify a case, quarantine them, contact trace and flatten the curve and that will be our strategy for the foreseeable future."

Reinforcements have been needed because of the jump in community seeding and the long hours the team has been working.

"We are working seven days a week until 10-11 in the evening, so the team are tired, and I am now enforcing rest days because we are in this for the long haul and need to be resilient."

Pictured top: Dr Nicola Brink.