SA Health’s contact tracers to be boosted and new system to buy more time in

At the peak of the pandemic just 40 cases a day would have overwhelmed SA’s virus hunters. That’s about to change.

SA Health contract tracers Martyna Gobell, Christian Peut, Chelsea Murphy and Sally Ellis. Picture: Matt Turner.

The state’s elite team of coronavirus detectives will be significantly boosted and contact-tracing systems overhauled as authorities plan for the COVID-19 pandemic to last “for months, if not years”.

SA Health’s new $1.7m central IT program, replacing current handwritten whiteboard systems, will allow teams to juggle almost three times more virus cases in any second-wave outbreak.

The system, to be fully online within weeks, will centrally develop “high-quality” data and send automated text messages to ill patients.

It will accelerate infection source checks and help track contacts within 48 hours so they can quarantine sooner.

Providing insight for the first time into the lengths virus sleuths went to reconstruct patient backgrounds, authorities warned of the dangers of lying in confidential interviews, which could thwart efforts to stop a cluster from spreading.

As three more sick expatriate women, in their 20s and 50s from Europe and South Asia, were reported Saturday, senior health officials urged the public to seek testing on the day they developed even minor symptoms to help buy crucial tracing time.

Authorities warned quick contact tracing and high testing rates were vital to maintain low levels of restrictions, as South Australia prepared to reopen to Victoria on December 1. Bans on gathering numbers and hospitality were set to ease this coming week.

Internal reviews found at the pandemic’s height, SA Health could only manage a peak of 40 daily cases.

The new IT Pandemic Contact Tracing Model handles more than 100 patients a day. The system, which SA is the second state to launch after successful overseas use, can become semi-automated to manage even more cases.

By next month, the department will have 300 contact tracers, after hiring 60 more from various backgrounds, including the public service, medicine and other allied- health areas. They will work in a new, specialised COVID division of the Communicable Disease Control Branch. Training and scenario planning has occurred for high-risk outbreaks in aged care, remote communities or workplaces.

The branch’s COVID systems executive director, Professor Katina D’Onise, told the Sunday Mail planning for a case surge was vital for a pandemic “likely to be ongoing for months, if not years”.

She said research showed people could be infectious two days before showing symptoms, which was “why we need this speed to break transmission chains”.

She said a “larger number of cases” in March would have made it “very hard to keep track of who spent time with whom and what venues were of significance”.

“We have learnt over the many months of the outbreak … that we need to have both speed and high quality, and we can’t sacrifice one for the other,” she said.

“That will help us to reduce the onward spread of any infection. Forty-eight hours is not a very long period of time … so the longer we have to do that (trace) job, the safer it will be for the community.”

Confidence has grown as SA stages events like this months State of Origin series opener. Picture: Mark Kolbe/Getty Images

TECHNIQUES REVEALED

Her colleague, COVID surveillance and investigation operations director Emma Denehy, said various techniques helped trigger memories over a fortnight, which was the virus’s incubation period.

Urging people to tell the truth and register with any electronic tracing systems such as QR codes, she said during interviews people were asked to check diaries, phones, photos, social media and bank statements.

“Our interviewers are very skilled at being able to get that information out,” she said.

“It sounds like a really hard task to say what did you did in the last two weeks? You’d be surprised.

“I know it seems personal what we’re asking but … we don’t care what people have done (or) places they shouldn’t have been. It is not something we’re concerned about. It doesn’t take much. A lot of untruths and it makes it really difficult.”

Under national plans to bolster tracing systems, banks would notify customers of shops, restaurants or cafes in virus hot spots.

Originally published as SA Health’s contact tracers to be boosted and new system to buy more time in