They are on the frontline of the pandemic; their job painstaking, but critical. Meet our contact tracers working tirelessly to stop the spread.
WHAT IS CONTACT TRACING?“This is something we have teams of people doing across the country every day of the week,” Victoria’s Deputy Chief Health Officer Dr Annaliese van Diemen told“It is a bit like detective work,” she told the program, explaining how her highly skilled team find where infected people have been and who they crossed paths with.
“No one really knows what we do, because we work in the background,” said Nectaria Tzimourtas, who leads the Victorian team of contact tracers.“A normal day is 12-17 hours a day at the moment,” she said. For other members of the team, like epidemiologist Dr Charles Alpren, three-month turnaround times for data analysis have become 7-hour deadlines.“The analysis we’re doing is genuinely informing decisions that are having huge effects on people’s lives, and we’re very conscious of that.”With the number of confirmed cases on the decline, Prime Minister Scott Morrison did not cave to pressure to ease up on restrictions.
“They are a team of Sherlock Holmes … they are doing a fantastic job on tacking down these cases,” he said.
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