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"It's very shocking for a lot of people to get a phone call to say they have
Covid-19. We give them a few hours to think about who they have seen, but it
can be overwhelming," said Kim Sayers, a contact tracer with the HSE.
She is among a team of 280 contact tracers making 800 tracing calls every
day in centres across Galway, Limerick, Dublin and Cork. The HSE is actively
recruiting 550 dedicated contact-tracers.
"A call-one is when someone is getting a positive diagnosis. These calls
are usually carried out by clinicians," said Paul Gillen, who was the shift
leader at the HSE's national tracing team this week, which is located on the
campus of the NUI in Galway.
"A call-two is when we phone those people back to get their close contacts,
and a call-three is when we phone those close contacts to let them know."
Ms Sayers said the Covid-19 app, which has now been downloaded by 1.3m
users, has supported the contact tracing work, picking up people that may
have been missed when tracing close contacts.
"The app gives an extra comfort level that we have picked up on other
people, if someone doesn't give a name or doesn't remember meeting someone,
the app will send an alert to a person to say they have been a close
contact."
The team in Galway has dedicated a number of staff to dealing with positive
cases in schools. Although 64 schools have had public health risk
assessments and 30 have had class or pod testing since the beginning of the
school term, the detection rate has been low with just a handful of positive
cases so far.
"Relative to the one million children heading back to schools, the numbers
have been low," according to Dr Sarah Doyle, the HSE's Clinical lead for the
Contact Management Programme.
Contact tracers are currently contacting close contacts of approximately
five or six people per positive case, but some cases can have as many as 50
close contacts.
Examples of cases that give rise to a high number of close contacts include
workplaces, family gatherings, and school environments.
"At the moment, the average number of contacts per positive case is between
five and six," said Dr Doyle.
"The median is a little bit lower. What that tells us is that there are a
small number of people who have a lot of contacts."
Among the more complex calls for the tracers has been those involving
migrant workers where English is not their first language, and an
interpreter is required to join the call.
"We were calling them up giving them a positive diagnosis, and there was
huge fear around what happens next, will you tell my employer?" said contact
tracer Triona Fehily, on secondment from her job as a Senior Occupational
Therapist.
Some of those cases were further complicated by the living arrangements of
workers, who might have been sharing accommodation and had spouses or
partners who worked in health care setting, a "double whammy" for the
contact tracers, Ms Fehily added.
Contact tracer Siobhan Lawlor, who is an Environmental Health officer, said
the calls vary a lot - from young asymptomatic cases, to elderly people who
may be very upset at the diagnosis and need extra time to digest the news
and work out the next steps.
"Last week I was on a call for an hour-and-a-half, nearly two hours with an
elderly person who was on their own, in their own home, and quite upset on
the phone. You try to be compassionate with them, as you go through the
assessment and guidelines with them,"
Monica Coughlan is among 80 volunteers from the NUIG staff who were trained
by the HSE to work as contact tracers, temporarily leaving her job as
librarian in the college. She also said many callers needed reassurance and
help in working out how to isolate.
"There was a lot of scenarios where people couldn't totally isolate, they
were very distressed," she said.
Although the team of contact tracers know their work is critical, those on
secondment from other parts of the HSE are concerned about the work they
have left behind.
Ms Feehily said she worries about her OT patients: "There is huge concern
among all of the therapy staff that have been redeployed to contact tracing.
"While we acknowledge the importance of this job and it is essential in the
national interest, there is a whole cohort out of people out there not
receiving services because we are here contact tracing."
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