MELBOURNE—Premier Daniel Andrews has defended the capabilities of his governments contact tracing system amid claims of frequent mistakes and several reports of people having to wait long periods for their virus test results, at the Victorian governments COVID-19 update on Aug. 11.
The Victorian governments contact tracing system has come under scrutiny in the past months with several reports of delayed results, including one report of a woman who is still waiting after 12 days for her familys COVID-19 test results.
Another woman who tested positive for COVID-19 positive had received no further communication from the Victorian Department of Health and Human Services after they had been a confirmed case.
Andrews responded to the queries by asserting he would look into the issues. But he played down the possibility that the contact tracers were stretched or that their availability may be lacking.
But the premier did admit “it can never be perfect.”
Currently, Victoria has 15,146 cases of CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, commonly known as novel coronavirus, in total.
Andrews noted at the press conference that “each of those cases is probably counting for say another four or five close contacts plus outbreaks with some of those, that close contact net, if you like, is hundreds of people, so its a very very significant task. ”
“Im never gonna be able to stand here and say to that every single person, on any given day, every single person that should have got a phone call got that phone call,” he said.
“When youre dealing with this many people, youre dealing with this task as challenging as it is, you can never deliver something completely perfect, there will always be some error. This is humans talking to other humans, and its a massive task,” the Victorian premier noted.
This is not the first time problems have arisen with Victorias contact tracing program.
On July 10 the Age reported that the Department of Health and Human Services had failed multiple times to quickly inform close contacts of COVID-19 cases, creating conditions where unsuspecting Victorians could unsuspectingly spread the virus.
Epidemiologist Professor Tony Blakely from Melbourne University told the Age that other countries success in fighting the virus had mainly come down to rapid contact tracing.
“Ideally, that contact tracing should be happening within hours,” Blakely said.
Victoria has an estimated 2,600 contact tracers working in shifts, according Read More – Source
