STATEMENT BY BRETT HERRON, GOOD SECRETARY-GENERAL AND MEMBER OF THE WESTERN CAPE PROVINCIAL PARLIAMENT
We welcome the Western Cape Health Department’s quadrupled tracing of Covid19 contacts.
Contact Tracing is an essential step in the coronavirus health protocol and the Western Cape was lagging behind.
31 May 2020
Over the past three weeks we have been calling for an urgent focus on contact tracing and I am relieved to see that the Western Cape’s numbers are improving.
Screen, test, trace, isolate and quarantine. This is the national health protocol being implemented in South Africa.
To reduce infections and save lives, experts advise that we must screen people for the coronavirus, test people who are at risk or show symptoms; trace the close contacts of those who are at risk of infecting others; isolate those who are possibly infected and quarantine those that do test positive.
In the data released a fortnight ago by the National Minister of Health, a reported 7614 contacts of Covid19 patients in the Western Cape had been traced. This meant that less than one close contact was being traced per Covid19 case in the province (cases as at 15 May: 7798 cases).
By 18 May 2020, the report to the Western Cape Parliament’s Ad-Hoc Covid-19 Committee stated that the number of contacts traced had risen to 11181, meaning slightly more than one close contact was now being traced per Covid19 infected person (cases as at 18 May: 10035 cases).
The most recent data from the National Minister of Health reports that number had improved to 13291 contacts traced in the Western Cape. This week a report to the Ad-Hoc Covid-19 Committee showed that these numbers improved dramatically to an estimated 41,500 contacts traced as at 22 May.
I have been very concerned that, amidst the escalating cases and deaths from Covid19 in the Western Cape, the reporting on contact tracing demonstrated insufficient reach.
A fortnight ago our own internal data analysis showed that the Western Cape was identifying just 1.3 close contacts for each Covid19 infected person, whereas KZN and Gauteng were tracing 3 and more than 4 contacts per patient respectively.
The apparent turnaround to near quadrupling of contact tracing in a week means, if the estimate is accurate, that more than 2 contacts per Covid19 infected person are being traced.
The Western Cape is still lagging behind but the increase is an indication of good, if very overdue, progress.
However, the same national data still indicates that the Western Cape is the lowest performing province when it comes to community screening and this must be explained by the Western Cape MEC for Health, Dr Nomafrench Mbombo.
In the meantime, we welcome the recent deployment of additional doctors and 800 additional nurses to the Western Cape announced by the National Minister of Health. I wish to thank all frontline workers for their efforts to protect us.
Ends…