springyzone, NSW has definitely had superior contact tracing.
- The team there have been able not only to contact people with a positive test result within 24 hours, but also their close contacts within a very good timeframe.
- Additionally (and importantly) ,the NSW contact tracing team have been able to devote resources to upstream investigation, not just downstream. (In other words, not just who might possibly be infectious now, but tracing it back to the source which means clamping down hard on further seeding from that source.)
In contrast, Victoria's contact tracing team were overwhelmed even at ~30 new cases a day. The claim by DHHS that they were getting to between 95% and 100% of new cases within 24 hours was simply not true. It has been established that DHHS were defensive and preferred to hide their errors rather than admit them and accept help. It's improved now, but what a tragedy that it took the loss of so many lives to make that happen.
I hope that the Northern Beaches cluster has not spread into Greater Sydney. If it has, I don't think that the current restrictions will be enough. We can only hope that it is relatively contained - but if I were living in Sydney, I would be bracing myself.
Holy cheddar and a nun, who'd have thought two months ago that we in Victoria (and specifically in Melbourne) would think ourselves lucky to be here in Melbourne, rolling doughnuts all the way to Christmas...?
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❝The system [Salesforce] allows faster and more accurate contact tracing and case management through a number of measures, including:
- automatically uploading positive test results from the DHHS database in near-real-time
- reducing manual input time
- providing scripts and prompts for contact tracers to ensure they have asked all questions
- allowing for prompts when a case needs to be actioned within a timeframe, including escalation to managers if this is not actioned
- facilitating a central end-to-end system record management process which allows overview of the entire matter
- sending automatic text message communications
- assigning cases to have a single case manager on an entire household
The significance of having a database which can support end-to-end contact tracing was explained by Dr Finkel:
It can help at every phase. Pop-up test sites initially used paper forms for collecting patient information and tracking the test sample. When the numbers are high processing these paper forms leads to significant delays and the likelihood of data entry errors. A modern system based on digital data collection and digitally tracking the data all the way through and into the contact-tracing system is much more efficient and less error-prone. For contact tracing confirmed cases are allocated to a contract-tracing officer to call the patient and interview them to identify their close contacts and then alert those close contacts that they have been exposed and must start quarantine. These interviews often take up to an hour. Traditionally the cases are allocated manually to the contact-tracing officers and interview details are recorded on paper and then subsequently manually entered into a database to assist with follow-up. This manual process works at low numbers but is easily overwhelmed when the case numbers are high. Moving to digital allocation of jobs and digitally prompted and digitally recorded case interviews is much more efficient and less error-prone.¹²⁵
By expediting these processes, the CRM system has put Victoria in a better position to manage an influx of cases moving forward by better keeping up with incoming cases and identifying and contacting primary contacts within the recommended 48-hour window:
... the first rule of contact tracing is do not let it get away from you. That has to be, if you like, front and centre, the core value that is necessary, and unfortunately that is what happened in that second wave...I do not know what the upper limit would be at the moment, but I suspect when you get up between 100 and 200 cases a day you are probably taxing even the best of systems globally. With IT and other things and a large workforce of several thousand people you can probably extend it even higher..¹²⁶
[...]
¹²⁵ Dr Alan Finkel AO, Transcript of evidence, p. 2.
¹²⁶ Professor Julian Rait, Transcript of evidence, p. 7.❞
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– Legislative Council Legal and Social Issues Committee. (2020). Inquiry into the Victorian Government’s COVID–19 contact tracing system and testing regime (pp. 73-74). Victoria: Parliament of Victoria. Retrieved from https://www.parliament.vic.gov.au/images/stories/committees/SCLSI/Inquiry_into_the_Victorian_Governm...
