Team stamping out the embers
THERE have been 11 consecutive days of no new cases of Covid19 in the South.
But if the disease that has killed two people in the region — and shut down the economy — was to rear its head again, Public Health South health protection officer Megan Callaghan is confident the contact tracing efforts in the South are good enough to lock down the disease, and again stamp it out.
‘‘It’s a big team effort by everybody — not just public health, but by the public as well to do that,’’ she said.
‘‘If you are someone going to work, keep a record of where you’ve been, who you’ve been in contact with. And also try to keep that social distancing at work.’’
Ms Callaghan was on the frontline during Alert Level 4.
Although the mediumsized public health unit with the largest geographical area in New Zealand was hit hard early, yesterday there were only 13 active cases, as 201 people had now recovered of the 216 confirmed and probable cases since the global pandemic reached the South last month.
At the height, there were 100 staff in 12 teams — some working from home or some, like Ms Callaghan, working from the Dunedin office at Wakari Hospital — contacting those with Covid19 and establishing who, during their infectious period, were close contacts and needed to be isolated, or who was a casual contact.
‘‘Just thinking back to the first one I did with my team, with 170 people [contacts to trace], they may have been assigned 30 contacts to follow up if I were to divide it up evenly,’’ Ms Callaghan said.
‘‘And then on top of that, once we’d rung all those, talked to them all, worked out if they were close or casual, if they need to go into isolation, the daily followups are a lot easier, because you’re just checking on emails. But we might have got another case the next day.
‘‘Then we would have had to repeat the whole process all over again. So, you might be dealing with multiple cases all on the go, and their followups.’’
Ms Callaghan’s team had been in touch with everyone connected to that case — both close and casual contacts — within two days.
The number of contact tracing teams had scaled back to four in the Southern District Health Board area, but ‘‘everyone’s aware that it may all have to ramp up again’’.
Nationally, there were two new cases of Covid19 yesterday. One person had arrived from overseas and was quarantined at the border and the other was linked to an existing case.
It is the successive 11th day on which case numbers have been in single digits.
There have been 104 breaches of Alert Level 3 so far. Twentyone people have been prosecuted and 71 warnings issued, and 742 complaints have been laid about businesses flouting the rules, mainly over a lack of physical distancing.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said she had seen photos of people congregating outside takeaway outlets, and government officials had contacted businesses to help them stop such congregations.
— additional reporting The