Coronavirus close contacts left uncontacted by tracers for more than a week
A Melbourne family has waited more than a week for a call from coronavirus contact tracers while isolated as close contacts of a school COVID-19 cluster, amid calls to strengthen Victoria’s contact tracing team to address delays.
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A family has waited more than a week for a call from contact tracers while isolated as close contacts of a school COVID-19 cluster.
Despite being a primary school aged boy being told to isolate from July 23 after COVID-19 cases emerged at his Wallan East school, his parents eventually had to call the Department of Health and Human Services themselves for advice.
Amid calls to further strengthen Victoria’s 2100-strong contact tracing team to address delays, it has emerged it took seven days for cases at the Our Lady of the Way primary school to be investigated.
While pleased Our Lady of the Way took immediate action to alert families of a coronavirus case among staff and ask them to isolate while the school was cleaned, the boy’s father told the Herald Sun he felt “let down” by the Andrews Government and DHHS.
“My partner and I are physically sick with stress and a sense of dread and feel completely abandoned,” he said.
“We are not all in this together.”
After finally receiving a generic letter from DHHS on July 28 confirming his son was a close contact and required a coronavirus test on day 11 of isolation, the father said it took him three attempts and 90 minutes on hold to finally get through to the public health team to ask which day that was.
A DHHS spokesman confirmed the public health team was first notified of a case at Our Lady of the Way on July 23 and received a spreadsheet of potential contacts three days later.
He said contact tracing of two positive cases was completed on 30 July.
“We were notified of a second case linked to the school the following day, and immediately began further contact tracing,” the DHHS spokesman said.
“All positive cases are interviewed by the contact tracing team within 24 hours of being notified - then our disease detectives identify any close contacts and contact them as soon as possible.”
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