Phone calls from hell: How many people told they may have COVID-19

A team of more than 300 contact tracers are working around the clock to track down people who may have been infected with COVID-19. We now reveal how many people have received the dreaded call, telling them they need to self-isolate.

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It is the phone call that everyone dreads – and it can now be revealed that more than 24,000 people across the state have received one.

For the first time since NSW Health contact tracing teams began the painstaking job of tracking down people who may have been infected, the state government has released details on just how many people have told they may have the virus.

Since the first case of COVID-19 was confirmed in Australia in late January, the Public Health Emergency Operations Centre has overseen about 120 daily phone calls with those contacted told to self-isolate and watch for symptoms.

The calls have been “close contacts” associated with 3653 positive cases.

Some of the Public Health COVID-19 tracing team (from left): Jennifer Lampard (Public Health surveillance nurse); Dr Anthea Katelaris (medical officer); Jennifer Paterson (infectious disease surveillance); and Sophie Norton (Public Health epidemiologist).

A close contact is someone that has been face-to-face with another person for 15 minutes or being in the same room such as a restaurant for two or more hours, others regarded as a “casual contact”.

Contact tracing team director Carolyn Murray said there were about 300 people now tracking close contacts compared with “four to six” in March.

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Staff were given a list of people to call and script to use in passing on the necessary information, she said.

“The quicker we can get someone diagnosed and then the list of people they’ve been in contact with, the quicker we can get people to self-isolate,” Ms Murray said.

“We would hope, if we find out about people in the morning that are a close contact, that we would have contacted them by the end of the day.

“Some people will have more than 50 contacts, or 100 contacts, and everyone of those individuals is called by us. That’s a lot of calls to make. Every day feels like a week.”

People seen wearing face masks in the Sydney CBD on August 15. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Joel Carrett

As well as staff from NSW Health, others making the calls include Australian Defence Force personnel, Qantas workers and Taronga Zoo employees.

The figures are in addition to 1.8 million COVID-19 tests that have been carried out across 280 testing sites, including 40 drive-through clinics and 17 pop-up sites with NSW Health Pathology supported by both private clinics and GPs across the state.

While contact tracing was a critical component of the response, Chief Health Officer Dr Kerry Chant thanked people who themselves had voluntarily come forward for testing – a move that remained crucial.

“Right now we need to stamp out any undetected infections which may be lurking in the community,” she said.

Health Minister Brad Hazzard praised staff fighting one of biggest health crises the State had ever faced.

“The extensive work undertaken to protect the community over the past eight months has been nothing short of awe-inspiring,” he said.

Hospitals and clinicians are working to quadruple ICU capacity from 500 to 2,000, with capacity now at over 1900.

More than 800 new ventilators have also been delivered.

Since January, the NSW Health Pathology team has been working to sequence genomes to examine the origin.

Originally published as Phone calls from hell: How many people told they may have COVID-19