Meet the South Australians who hunt and kill coronavirus
Their work has been likened to that of Sherlock Holmes – these are the South Australians hunting down coronavirus and doing all that they can to wipe it out.
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The work of Megge Miller and her contact-tracing team has been likened to that of Sherlock Holmes by Prime Minister Scott Morrison.
But it is not the first time the epidemiologist has been on the front line during a major disease outbreak.
Ms Miller, 44, was part of a World Health Organisation team working in Vietnam in 2003 during the SARS epidemic.
Now, 17 years later, she is harnessing that valuable experience within the SA Health Communicable Diseases Control Branch in response to the coronavirus pandemic.
Ms Miller, whose work normally focuses on foodborne disease outbreaks, is one of about 150 contact-tracers working around the clock to track down cases and their possible contacts to control the spread.
This involves identifying infected people and establishing with whom they have been in contact and where they have travelled.
“Asking the person to check their calendar or check their phone – have they taken any pictures of places they may have been? Are there any selfies with a friend that may prompt a memory about who they may’ve been with?” she said.
“We’re really relying on the information that people have been to provide to us when we talk to them.
“We try to do the interview as quickly as possible because we realise that the sooner we can talk to the person who’s been infected with coronavirus and their contacts, the sooner we can get those people into isolation and that means we can stop the virus spreading in the community faster.”
Ms Miller, a mother of two, said she found people were generally willing to share information.
“We’re very appreciative of the co-operation of the people of South Australia and maintaining social distancing,” she said.
“Being so co-operative shows how, collectively, by all of us doing our bit, we’re helping to solve this problem.”
Taking on the world’s biggest challenge
Katherine Hooper loves a challenge – and, across the world, there is none bigger than tackling coronavirus.
“I’ve worked as a volunteer nurse in Africa – Uganda and Kenya – so I like a challenge,” she said.
Ms Hooper, 33, is an SA Pathology registered nurse working at the Repat’s drive-through testing clinic.
She and her colleagues are swabbing up to 140 people a day and it is unlikely to slow down after the State Government announced a two-week testing blitz.
“Most people have been absolutely amazing,” Ms Hooper said. “I haven’t been thanked so much in my whole nursing career and it’s quite overwhelming. And even outside of the drive-through, the public who know what I do, their support has been great.
“The majority of people understand this is a very ad hoc health-care service that we’re offering and I think it is an amazing service.
“It saves people having to come into a waiting area and possibly come into contact with a case.”
The drive-through clinic is open seven days a week between 8am and 4.30pm.
“It’s not ridiculously long hours but it’s just non-stop the whole day,” Ms Hooper said.
“We just keep going until everyone has been seen.”
Ms Hooper said the actual testing did not take long.
“We do a swab of their throat and their nose. It can be a little bit uncomfortable,” she said. “The specimen goes to Royal Adelaide Hospital for testing and generally within 24 hours they will get notified from their doctor.”
Ms Hooper said people were initially scared when the clinic first opened.
The virus has prevented Ms Hooper from seeing her elderly parents at Victor Harbor and, disappointingly, presented an opportunity to thieves.
“Unfortunately, my house got broken into when I was at work the other day,” she said.
Ms Hooper said, overall, people were proud and grateful for the efforts of health-care workers in South Australia.
Invaluable lessons learned from swine flu
South Australia’s preparation for the coronavirus response can be traced back more than a decade to the last pandemic – swine flu.
It was during this illness, in 2009, that SA Pathology as a nation-leading testing unit was already planning for the next worldwide outbreak of a disease.
SA Pathology’s head of virology Geoff Higgins, 66, said it had performed similarly well during swine flu in 2009.
“The way we set up our laboratory was that we would do a lot of in-house testing,” he said.
“As we learnt about the epidemic then we set up our lab as a high-volume lab.
“We had the highest testing rate in the country, and from that time on, the workload from respiratory testing in particular was increasingly made freely available to GPs across South Australia.
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“Going into this pandemic, we had about 20,000 (extraction reagents required for testing) that we turned over on a regular basis because of the high volume but specifically it prepared us for the next pandemic.”
Latest figures show SA Pathology has conducted more than 38,000 coronavirus tests as of April 15.
SA Pathology head of public health Mark Turra, 47, said it was in a strong position to start high-volume testing for coronavirus when it arrived in South Australia. “Initially, there was significant concern in the public domain but from a health perspective, we have everything we require,” Mr Turra said.
He praised the exceptional staff at SA Pathology, who in coming weeks will be able to turn around coronavirus results in just an hour for those deemed clinically urgent.