HowCovid patients are told they tested positive
People often become anxious or burst into tears, then they’re given six hours to move into a quarantine facility. George Block reports on what happens when you’re positive for Covid-19.
‘‘We have your test results, and they have come back positive.’’
Those few words spoken over the phone by a contact tracer are how people first discover they have coronavirus.
What follows is a whirlwind of contact tracing interviews and anxious chats with family and friends as the patient prepares to be spirited off to Auckland’s Jet Park quarantine facility for a two-week stint with just six hours’ notice.
Stuff used the Official Information Act to obtain scripts and training materials provided to contact tracing staff in Auckland during and after the Auckland August cluster.
The documents shed new light on the frantic first hours of a Covid-19 patient’s diagnosis and the role and responsibilities of contact tracers, whose crucial work happens largely out of the spotlight.
The news breaks
Contact tracing staff with Auckland Regional Public Health Service (ARPHS), at Greenlane, are given scripts for conducting interviews or breaking the news to positive cases and their close contacts.
The script for a positive case begins by asking the staffer to confirm they are indeed speaking to the positive case and that they are in isolation, indoors and are comfortable.
‘‘I understand you recently had a Covid test, can you please advise why you had the test done?’’ the
script reads.
‘‘We have your test results, and they have come back positive,’’ they are told.
The script tells the staffer to then pause, as sometimes people become upset, anxious or burst into tears.
It suggests reassuring words: ‘‘We understand that this may be scary, but we are going to walk alongside you and come up with a plan together.’’
The staffer is urged to tell the patient not to spread the news of the diagnosis widely. ‘‘Advise them to think carefully before posting anything related to your Covid diagnosis online (social media) as you may receive unwanted responses.’’
The contact tracer then tells the patient to call an ambulance and advise they are a positive case if anyone in the household becomes ‘‘significantly unwell’’.
Their entire household is told to remain in isolation before a contact tracer scopes out their movements to identify the likely source or sources of infection in the 14-days before the onset of symptoms.
‘‘It would be helpful if you could think about, by date where you went, any travel with details such as company and seat, any people you would have had close contact with (within 2m for 15 min or more) and write these down.’’
The Covid-19 case interview form, released as part of the trove of documents, shows public health staffers gather a wide range of information during their interviews with positive cases.
They are asked everything from whether they visited any live animal markets in the two-weeks before onset, to whether their household is overcrowded to the extent the patient was unable to properly.
Welcome to Jet Park
isolate
During the Auckland August cluster, which eventually sprawled to 179 cases and sent the city back into alert level 3 restrictions, positive cases and their close contacts were moved to the Jet Park quarantine hotel near Auckland Airport.
The same happened during the later, and much smaller, marine engineer and November Defence worker outbreaks.
A script provided to contact tracers, dated August 17, shows cases in the August cluster and their household close contacts were given only a few hours to prepare for their mandatory two-week stay at Jet Park.
‘‘You have around six hours [depends on time of day as there are no after-hours transfers] to arrange anything that is required, but we would like to arrange transport by 4pm.
‘‘This is a directive from the Director General of Health, Dr Ashley Bloomfield.’’
Meals were free but cases and close contacts were told no visitors or alcohol were allowed at the hotel.
Who are the contact tracers?
Contact tracers are responsible for scoping out and investigating the movements of confirmed cases to work out where they might have caught the virus and who they could have infected.
ARPHS requires its contact tracing staff to be qualified as health professionals, for example in nursing, occupational therapy or as a paramedic.
A document supplied as part of the Official Information Act response shows they are assigned to a buddy on their first day, who they shadow for three to five days as they learn the ropes.
If the contact tracer has a practising certificate they are paid according to their applicable collective agreement. If not, they are paid between about $58,000 and $76,000 annually.