Getting Covid-19 contact tracing right is crucial before New Zealand eventually enters Alert Level 3, according to an infectious diseases expert.
New Zealand’s Covid-19 Alert Level 4 lockdown will end at 11.59pm Monday April 27, before the Alert Level 3 lockdown kicks in for at least two weeks.
Yesterday, Dr Ayesha Verrall released a report into how contact tracing is working in New Zealand, where she noted more was needed to move down those alert levels.
Among her findings, Dr Verrall's audit found contact tracing needed to increase three or four-fold and the system must be able to handle 1000 cases a day.
Dr Verrall told TVNZ1's Breakfast this morning it's crucial for the Government to meet the above targets to make sure New Zealand was ready to go down to Level 2.
"Level 3 is similar to Level 4 in terms of bubble size, so I think actually the transition to level 2 is the crucial one for having your contact tracing totally ready."
Dr Verrall said contact tracing is widely practiced for other diseases, but explained that when someone is diagnosed with an illness like the coronavirus they'll get a phone call from the public health unit where they'll be asked to go into isolation either in hospital or at home and to list everyone they've been in contact with.
"That currently will be mostly the people in their bubble, the people at home, but when we come down to Level 3 and Level 2 that'll be a wider group of people that might include their workplace and it might also include, if we're lucky to go back to cafes again, people in anonymous settings during everyone in this cafe at a particular time.
"The tracing is done by a variety of people, usually public health nurses going through ringing that list of contacts that they got from the person who's ill, or now there's a facility to do it in the Ministry of Health through a call centre as well," she said.
Other audit recommendations were:
Six of the most important performance measures for contact tracing, in the audit:
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