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Victoria’s contact tracing system declined as daily COVID-19 cases hit about 200 cases, Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton admits, although improvements have pushed that figure.
Reflecting on the state’s deadly second wave, Professor Sutton told an inquiry into its often-controlled contact-tracing regime that authorities couldn’t keep up when new cases hit low figures.
“It’s probably at that kind of level when you get to 200 or more cases a day, it really starts challenging your ability to get all that timely close contact information … within that critical time frame,” he said.
Professor Sutton is “confident” that cases will not rise again to that point, with the state marking his 24th day without a new infection or death.
His comments follow Australia’s chief scientist, Dr Alan Finkel, who prior to last week’s investigation suggested that the tracking efforts would be easily overwhelmed at the height of the Victoria crisis.
Newly appointed Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services Euan Wallace said close contacts were on average 10 per case, as the daily infection peaked at more than 700 in early August.
This meant identifying 7,000 close contacts every day, a business he said no Australian jurisdiction could handle.
“The trials that were underway and every other state and territory in the country couldn’t cope with those new numbers every day,” Professor Wallace told the investigation.
Victoria has since moved to a digitized system created by US technology company Salesforce that automates the end-to-end process.
Professor Wallace said that and other improvements had put Victoria in a position where “she could cope with 500 new cases a day”.
The system built by Salesforce will be fully integrated by December, but it was revealed last week that the company offered its services to the state government in March.
None of the senior DHHS officials who showed up prior to the investigation, led by Reason Party MP Fiona Patten, were aware of why the offer was initially rejected.
“It’s not a case of rejection per se,” said Prof Wallace.
“There have been several approaches to the department.”
Professor Wallace said the department’s previous IT platform did not separate negative and positive test results, slowing down the identification of confirmed cases and initiation of contact tracing.
“Essentially the positive results were held back by the negative results,” he said.
“So a very important decision was made to triage or filter out the negative results to allow the positive results to arrive immediately.
“This probably saved us 24 hours in the” every minute counts “approach.”
DHHS test commander Jeroen Weimar said a quarter of those tested for coronavirus across the state were not symptomatic.
He said nasal swabs had been “far less probed” in recent months and sage-based tests used for the asymptomatic surveillance program.
The Legislative Council’s Legal and Social Affairs Committee is investigating whether the contact tracing system as it is can handle future coronavirus outbreaks.
Australian Associated Press
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