Business not told of positive virus case for two weeks
Contact tracers have not explained why they took two weeks to tell employees at a Melbourne car dealership that a customer had tested positive to COVID, with the manager furious at how “poorly” the situation was handled.
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Contact tracers took two weeks to tell employees at a Melbourne car dealership that a customer was COVID-positive.
The infected customer spent an hour and a half at the car yard, in the eastern suburbs, on September 29 but workers were only notified on Tuesday.
The car yard manager, who asked not to be named, said on Wednesday that he was “alarmed” by the belated warning that his staff were exposed to a positive case.
He said contact tracers did not explain the reason for the delay and were initially reluctant to provide the name of the COVID-positive customer, citing privacy reasons.
Several hours after the initial call on Tuesday morning, a member of the contact tracing team called the manager back in the afternoon to provide the customer’s name in order to assist with tracing efforts.
The manager told 3AW the whole thing was handled “very poorly” and left his employees nervous.
About 20 staff may have been exposed, and up to 30 customers, the manager said.
“The one blessing in disguise is that it’s 14 days later and hopefully we’ve passed the incubation period and no one’s presented with any symptoms to this point,” he said.
“But to me, it just shows significant flaws in this contract tracing system, which is the way out, it’s our main weapon against this virus and it’s not good enough.”
The manager said he was not told when the customer tested positive or when they were first spoken to by contact tracers.
“None of that was made clear to us. All I know is that 14 days after visiting is when we were informed,” he said.
Victoria’s testing and community engagement commander Jeroen Weimar said the delay was not good enough.
He said: “It’s very hard to identify where someone’s been if that information is not forthcoming. So we’re now, with the car dealership and the same thing as with Shepparton, if we found out that someone visited somewhere 14 days ago we are now backtracking over that two-week period. Had we known that information 10, 12 days ago we could be far ahead of this curve and fewer people would have been exposed.”