Call centre scripts to speed up COVID-19 tracing as infections soar

Melbourne company Panviva is helping the US trace COVID-19 infections, but why is there no local interest?

Most tracing interviews take one hour and typically yielded a further 10 contacts, resulting in another 10 hours work. Picture: Aaron Francis/The Australian

Three US states, including Florida, are using cloud technology from a Melbourne company as part of their tracing efforts to combat COVID-19 as the number of new American infections soars to an average of 62,000 a day.

But Panviva’s platform, which uses call centre scripts to eliminate the need for extensive training and equips tracers with the necessary information to identify the sources of infections, is yet to be introduced in Australia as Victoria and NSW scramble with a fresh spike.

The need to roll out tracing quickly is rising, with Victorian health authorities yet to identify the source of 790 COVID-19 cases, including 458 in the fortnight to Wednesday.

Panviva chief executive Ted Gannan said the company aggregated the essential information that tracers needed to know when interviewing people infected with COVID-19, enabling them to swiftly identify other contacts.

The company provides call centre software for Westpac, ANZ, Medibank, Foxtel and Telstra as well as other bluechip companies and recently pivoted to COVID-19 tracing in the US.

So far Florida, which reported a record 132 coronavirus-related deaths in one day on Tuesday, is using Panviva’s platform, as well as Indiana and Arizona, which signed up this week.

Mr Gannan said “speed was of the essence” when an outbreak happens, with “lives on the line” and it was therefore vital tracers knew what questions to ask so they could quickly identify the sources of infections.

He said most tracing interviews took one hour and typically yielded a further 10 contacts, resulting in another 10 hours work. Looking at Victoria’s 238 new cases on Wednesday, identifying the sources of those infections could take thousands of hours’ work.

“The person who is doing the contact tracing needs to be able to interview people about things and get information and then put it in the system to be able to use it in a way that enables them to track other contacts and the source of the infection,” Mr Gannan said.

“When an outbreak happens you have got to put people onto that right away and you have got to get it from wherever you can, and the chances are (the tracers) have never done it before. So there are special skills that people just don’t have and have to be set up to do that pretty much instantly and that’s where our solution comes in.

“It provides the instructions that someone who is doing the job needs to follow, so they have it at their fingertips while they are doing it.”

When asked why Panviva’s home state, Victoria, hadn’t used its platform particularly the challenges the state government is facing, Mr Gannan said “there was a lot of noise”.

“There are a lot of people offering assistance of all sorts. You have got people under pressure, politics ... when you are under pressure sometimes it is hard to see the obvious.”