Health
Contact tracing is an important step in the public-health response to the pandemic. According to the national Minister of Health, the Province had identified 9 204 contacts for tracing as at 15 May 2020 and had reached 7 614. By this date the Western Cape had 7 798 positive cases. This means that the Western Cape had identified only 1,2 contacts on average per positive case and had reached fewer than one contact per positive case. The Minister’s statistics indicated that, at 83% of the identified contacts reached, the Western Cape is reaching the lowest percentage of contacts in the country.
1 (a) Why is the Western Cape identifying so few contacts per positive case and (b) why is the Western Cape reaching on average fewer than one contact per positive case;
2. why is the Western Cape not reaching more contacts?
1. (a) The big gap between contacts identified and contacts reached was mainly due to an initial artefact in the contact tracing policy, in the first two weeks after the first cases were identified, namely that the entire flight manifest of any confirmed case, who traveled on a flight to Cape Town, were listed as contacts, which resulted in a large number of contacts, which were not in fact close contacts. The policy was specifically narrowed the contacts to people seated within 2 meters confirmed cases, subsequently. The number of contacts listed as 9 204, were contacts linked to cases of 2 weeks prior to 15th May 2020. The real number contacts linked to the 7 614 cases as at 15th May 2020, were more and the data lag has subsequently been addressed.
(b) The discrepancy is explained in (a) above.
More contacts are reached. The data discrepancies have since been addressed
