TIME IS NOT ON OUR SIDE

May 09, 2020 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

Contact tracing is not rocket science. As such, the local health authorities’ excuse about contact-tracing being affected because persons are not being honest is pitiful.
Guyana may have avoided having so many cases in so short a period if there had been effective contact tracing. We may not have had 94 cases today, given that about only half a dozen of these are imported cases, had greater attention been paid to contact tracing.
It is now widely accepted that early contact-tracing and testing was primarily responsible for the lower rates of infection and deaths from COVID -19 in countries such as Germany, South Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore, and New Zealand when compared to elsewhere.
New York State is now contemplating hiring more than a thousand persons to do contact tracing. The State was so overwhelmed by the exponential spread of the COVID-19 (coronavirus) that it simply could not have paid the sort of attention to contact tracing then that it is doing now that the deaths, new cases and hospitalizations have been falling.
The first coronavirus case in New York City was confirmed on March 1. Within one week, there were more than 16 cases. And less than two weeks after more than 23,000 persons had been infected.
Since then an additional 320,000 more New Yorkers have been infected and more than 26 have died. The situation in the state is improving but more than 200 persons are still dying and the daily new infections are still totally more than 3,000 per day.
Guyana should have learnt from that experience. Contact tracing should have been employed to help isolate those persons who were in contact with confirmed cases. This would have aided the suppression of the virus.
It is still not too late to start. But excuses are being made about persons not giving honest information. This is poppycock.
The Ministry of Public Health is yet to report publicly how many persons are doing contact tracing. So how many persons are employed at present to contact trace the 94 confirmed cases?
It is not hard to guess the reasons for the inadequate contact tracing. First, was the problem of inadequate testing kits. Testing was originally only being done on persons who were displaying serious symptoms. Those who were confirmed were placed under institutional isolation.
There are now more testing kits. Testing is being ramped- up. As more people are tested, more cases are going to be unearthed. It is important therefore that contact tracing be intensified now as a matter of priority before the numbers become unmanageable.
Secondly, there obviously would have been problems with employing persons to do contact tracing because there is no budget in place. Yet, the government found money to rent a hotel at G$22M per month and to undertake its refurbishment for use as a COVID 19 sanatorium. When completed these works are expected to cost in excess of G$2B.
Monies are also been squandered in unnecessary activities. There was a problem with the declarations of 400 out of the more than 2, 300 statement of polls for elections. Common sense would have indicated that the best way for the Elections Commission to solve this problem would have been for it to cross-reference the disputed 400 odd declarations with those which are in possession of the Chief Elections Officer.
Instead what is happening is that another billion dollar exercise has to be undertaken to recount ballots which have already been counted and for which statements of poll have been issued. All this wasted expenditure could have gone to hire 200 young persons to undertake continuous contact-tracing.
Contact tracers do not have to be in physical contact with the infected. Contact tracing is an information-gathering exercise and this can be done via technology. You would be surprised the results that would be obtained from taking a few qualified high school leavers, giving them access to a phone to do contact tracing.
This is not a time for excuse-making. Solutions have to be found and can be found. But if those who are supposed to be developing those solutions are going to be concerned about putting a spin on the counting of ballots, they are going to lose control of this pandemic.
And instead of counting ballots, we will end up having a problem with counting the number of confirmed cases of the virus and the number of deaths. It need not meet this stage. Increase the contact tracing now! Before it is too late!
(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

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