Contract Tracers Working Behind The Scenes

Seven days a week, from 8.30 am until 10 pm, contract tracers interview people diagnosed with COVID-19 to determine when they were likely to be infectious and where they were during that time.

Based across the state, these contact tracers are under pressure to contact each case within 24 hours of their diagnosis. Their approach is rigorous, but it doesn’t always identify all exposure sites at once. Even when the exposure sites are discovered, there are sound reasons underpinning why those sites are not always made public.

Sometimes people with the virus are very unwell, they may be sleeping or their phone may be flat, so the contact tracers aren’t able to speak with them immediately. If the phone number or address is incorrect and the tracers aren’t able to connect with the people, police are called in to make contact.

Once contact is established, a tracer’s immediate priority is to determine when they may have been contagious and exposed others in the community to the virus. They generally work on the basis of people being contagious for two days prior to the onset of symptoms, or if they’re asymptomatic, two days prior to their swab being taken. They look back three days before symptoms start for people in high-risk settings, such as hospitals or aged care facilities.

Tracers may find there was a week’s delay between people having had mild symptoms, which they mistook for hay fever, and getting tested. This impacts how quickly exposure sites can be announced.

Sometimes it is hard to remember what happened a week ago, but tracers help support the affected person to remember. QR codes are invaluable when people have appropriately checked in. Sometimes tracers also need to ask to look through bank transactions and loyalty reward card records to access specific dates and times they were in public places, allowing their detective work to dive deeper, potentially trawling through CCTV footage, requesting rosters from employers or information from appointment books. When someone has paid with cash and remembers the amount but not the exact time or date, tracers might call the business and ask them to search through sales transactions to find a match.

As soon as they are confident they know the venue, date and time, they share the information with the public. The only exception to making a venue public would be when they know they have been in contact with everyone who was at the venue who may have been at risk. As soon as they are aware of an exposure site that puts the public at risk, they send it to Sydney to be loaded onto the NSW Health COVID-19 case locations web page.

Murrumbidgee Local Health District director of Public Health, Tracey Oakman, said the contact tracing team was working under significant pressure to gain accurate information and protect their communities. They also felt the emotional impact of working with people who are processing a confronting diagnosis.

Ms Oakman says it’s important to remember that everyone working in contact tracing is local to a community that they care about, and conspiracy theories suggesting information is withheld are damaging and untrue.

“It is our interest to make sure our community is safe, so our mothers, fathers, daughters and sons don’t get infected. We are part of the community too, and none of us would benefit from withholding information if there was a risk.”

• Topics:

• Covid-19
• Health & Wellbeing