Intense tracing effort recalled
MANDY Murphy normally only has one colleague for company in her role as a communicable diseases nurse for Southland and Queenstown Lakes.
Covid19 changed all that, as her formerly littleunderstood role in contact tracing people who might have come into contact with someone infected with a contagious disease took on national importance.
By March 16, eight staff were working on contact tracing, a number that increased threefold in the following fortnight.
On March 31, the workforce nearly doubled again, from 24 to 45, and by April 2 there were 72 people contact tracing.
‘‘With lockdown, there were a lot of people not doing their normal job and they put their hands up to help, it wasn’t like we were out there looking for people,’’ Ms Murphy said.
That team shouldered a heavy burden in the early days of the pandemic, when the southern region had more cases of Covid19 per head of population than anywhere else.
Most of those cases were in Ms Murphy’s region, stemming from the World Hereford Conference in Queenstown and the Bluff wedding clusters.
‘‘People say they are thankful to the health workers but I don’t think they really knew what went on in small public health units like ours.
‘‘That
Bluff outbreak was so sad and there were a lot of emotions about that . . . we were trying to get through the cases but we were also working as social workers a little bit.
‘‘There was a lot of guilt about that one and looking back it makes me sad because they were the nicest people . . . they followed every rule and they were absolutely in the right to have 70 people at their wedding.’’
There are two different aspects to contact tracing work: establishing who a case’s close contacts are, and identifying possible places or events where a case might have been.
‘‘Nobody hides anything from us,’’ Ms Murphy said.
‘‘They know they have a serious illness and they want to help and to stop it: if they don’t name them, then they will give us a place.’’
Close contacts, who are most at risk of contracting a disease, are the immediate focus of tracing efforts.
Usually workmates or family members, they are often quickly identifiable.
‘‘Exposure events’’ are a more complex challenge, especially back in March prior to the introduction of QR codes and tracing apps.
‘‘Before then it was just memory . . . it’s finding ways to give them prompts.’’
Diaries, phone and bank records all help jog people’s memories, although often an hour with a calendar and a spouse alongside would help map out a sequence of previously mundane but now supremely important things.
All the contact tracing staff felt the anxiety of the public as the pandemic unfolded and felt under pressure to deliver, Ms Murphy said.
‘‘I look back now and it was a bit of a blur, and I ask, ‘how did I get through that?’
‘‘I don’t even remember half the stuff that happened because it was just fullon noise, it was crazed. I didn’t read any papers or anything like that, because I was too involved in it.
‘‘I used to hear people talk about it, like at the supermarket, and some of the time they weren’t nice comments, and it hurt me a little bit because they didn’t know what was going on in that public health unit 20 hours a day.
‘‘I will be glad to see the end of it, for sure.’’