Thousands of Covid-19 close contacts not traced due to strained system

 

COVID-19 | Close contacts of Covid-19 patients, numbering in the thousands, cannot be immediately traced due to overwhelmed district health offices, which simply do not have the capacity to reach everyone.

Sources within the medical fraternity told Malaysiakini that on average, more than 6,000 close contacts a day in Selangor alone cannot be immediately traced due to a lack of resources.

This was revealed during a video conference between private hospitals and the Health Ministry last Sunday.

The strained contact-tracing system was highlighted during the video conference to discuss how private hospitals can help relieve some of the pressure on the public health system.

More than 30,000 new Covid-19 cases were recorded in the last 10 days.

If each Covid-19 patient has several close contacts, the total number could run into the hundreds of thousands.

In December, some Covid-19 patients Malaysiakini spoke to said the district health office only contacted them to do contact tracing after they had recovered.

Others resorted to conducting their own contact-tracing by informing everyone they had come in contact with for the two weeks prior so that they could get tested at private clinics.

The situation is now significantly worse than in December.

The average new cases last month was 1,521 a day. For the first 19 days of this month, the average had almost doubled to 2,749 a day.

Under the Health Ministry's latest policy, even if a close contact is traced by health authorities, they won't be tested if they do not show symptoms.

However, Health Ministry director-general Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah had said they must still undergo self-isolation regardless of whether they have been tested for the virus or not.

The World Health Organization (WHO) in its guidance on contact tracing for Covid-19 said it is an essential public health tool for controlling the disease.

Health experts have warned that the strategy of not testing asymptomatic close contacts could aggravate the spread of the pandemic.

But the government said it does not have a choice. Noor Hisham said they do not have enough tests to go around, so priority must go to those who have symptoms.

The same WHO guideline does say that in the event there is insufficient capacity to test, then the government should focus on high-risk groups.

"For contact tracing to be effective, countries must have adequate capacity to test suspect cases in a timely manner.

"Where this is not possible, testing and contact tracing strategies may instead focus on specific high-risk settings with vulnerable individuals, such as hospitals, care homes or other closed settings.

"Because individuals may transmit Covid-19 while pre-symptomatic or asymptomatic, this guidance also emphasises the importance of quarantining contacts to further reduce the potential for secondary transmission," it said.

As the state health system increasingly lacks the capacity to monitor everyone who may have come in contact with Covid-19 patients, it then falls on individuals to behave responsibly and self-isolate.

A large part of the country was placed under a second movement control order (MCO 2.0) beginning Jan 13 to curb the spiralling number of Covid-19 cases.

This will be extended to the rest of the country, except for Sarawak, beginning Jan 22 as the number of Covid-19 cases continued to climb.

The Health Ministry estimates that it will take around 12 weeks before the Covid-19 curve can be flattened. - Mkini

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