Politics
Bedrock of the Island’s Elimination Strategy
The independent review says that it was extremely effective with a team of ‘highly committed, skilled people’
Contact tracing was one of the major successes of the island’s response to Covid, the Brunner review finds.
The independent review says that it was extremely effective with a team of ‘highly committed, skilled people’ which together with border control ‘was the bedrock of the island’s elimination strategy.’
But it wasn’t without its flaws. As there was no plan for contact tracing prior to the first case of Covid in the island, management structures were put in place under pressure, with missed opportunities for greater data insight.
Despite clear international advice to set up contact tracing services from early in 2020, it was not until March 3 2020 that contract tracing was put on the island’s agenda. Yet it appears that not much was done to put it in place, until the first positive case in the island on March 19, 2020, where Public Health and DEFA scrambled to assemble teams, borrow scripts, adopt guidance and stand up a contact tracing service, the review says.
This rush meant that there were various ‘suboptimal’ aspects of service delivery, such as starting with a paper system, lack of quality assurance, and a lack of clarity around leadership and management functions.
Whilst the operational function was effective with the team of contact tracing investigators being highly skilled, there were few standard operating procedures, a lack of clear leadership and generally poor governance surrounding the flow of information, according to Brunner’s report.
Another finding was that the contact tracing team was put under extreme pressure and there were missed opportunities to increase staff numbers to ensure it could operate at a sustainable level.
In March 2021, there were between 600 and 900 active contact tracing cases.
