Contact tracing ‘must be done in 48 hours’
Professor managing centre says speedier turnaround is vital
THE expert managing the country’s largest Covid-19 contact tracing centre has said people should know within 48 hours whether they have been exposed to the virus.
Professor Mary Codd, the associate dean of public health at UCD, warned that just because the country was opening up, doesn’t mean we can become less vigilant.
The leading epidemiologist explained: ‘It should take 48 hours from when the swab is taken to when the person is notified and the contact tracing is completed.
‘Progress has being made but let’s not get complacent, the faster the better. We need to get a good proportion of these done within 48 hours. We are in a race with a very contagious and infectious virus.
‘It moves faster than we do and we have to do whatever we can to intercept it.
‘What we are trying to do is prevent sporadic outbreaks and just because the country is opening up doesn’t mean we ignore the vigilance that is required. The positivity rate has declined but we can’t stop, we have to keep our foot on the pedal. This virus is not going away, the virus is ahead of us.’
Prof Codd also suggested that the turnaround time between when swabs are taken to when contact tracers inform people they have been exposed could be shortened if certain tasks are automated.
She added: ‘There are still human parts in the process and some parts such as making the contact tracing calls cannot be automated.
‘There are parts of the test-taking that are still happening manually and you’d like to see parts of that automated… that’s something that would be more ideal.’
Prof Codd’s recommendations follow a pledge by the HSE that from tomorrow it will take only three days for people to be informed whether they have been exposed to the virus. This will mean that those tested should have a result between one and two days, and that people exposed to those who test positive, will be informed within three days. Up until now the average turnaround time was five days.
Meanwhile, according to consultant pathologist at Dublin’s Beaumont Hospital, Professor Bill Tormey, test results and contact tracing could be completed faster if the laboratories processing the tests used a pooling system. The medic explained: ‘Testing for virus in nasal and throat swabs is only one aspect of the process, which begins with notification to have a test, followed by sampling using swabs and laboratory identification of the virus followed, most importantly, by sensitive communications of the positive result to the patient and immediate identification of all of the patient’s close contacts. From start to finish this should not take more than 48 hours and preferably not more than 36 hours. Test efficiency can be improved overnight by simply pooling test samples into groups of five. A negative result means that five samples have been tested as one and the five can be immediately be given the all-clear.
‘In the event of a positive result in a pool of five we simply go back and test each of the five in the pool until we find the culprit.’
‘We have to keep the foot on the pedal’