Chief Medical Officer of Health in Alberta, Dr. Deena Hinshaw (Photo: Government of Alberta)

By Shaun Penner

Contact Tracers Swamped

AHS to prioritize COVID-19 case investigations amid growing backlog

Nov 23, 2020 | 3:10 PM

With COVID-19 cases surging in the last two months in Alberta, chief medical officer of health Dr. Deena Hinshaw says contact tracers in the province have been unable to keep up with case notifications.

As a result, Hinshaw says there is a slowly growing backlog of cases over the past several weeks who have not yet had a call from AHS to do the case investigation.

Dr. Hinshaw made clear that notifications of a positive test result have continued to be made for all positive cases, but the contact tracing team’s ability to conduct full case investigations has been hampered.

She says this is a growing issue that must be addressed.

“In order to maximize the effectiveness of the team, I have asked AHS to start with the most recently-diagnosed cases and work backwards, trying to reach as many cases as possible, but prioritizing the cases which will have the greatest benefit in reducing transmission.”

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“Therefore, as a temporary measure effective [Tuesday], if 10 days have passed since an Albertan received their positive COVID-19 test results, AHS will no longer call these individuals to conduct case investigations and contact tracing.”

Instead, they will get a text message notifying them to not expect a call as well as when their isolation period will end.

The ever-growing backlog also means the province might not be able to track every case that might be linked to schools in the last two weeks.

“School-aged children will continue to be part of the priority calls in the most recent cases,” said Hinshaw. “To date, schools have done an excellent job supporting the public health measures and in school transmission has occurred only 182 times, with 99 of these times having only one new case as a result.”

As for cases among healthcare and continuing care workers, they are not expected to be impacted by the backlog as they are monitored through a separate mechanism.

Alberta added another 1,549 cases for November 22, bringing the province’s active case total to 13,166.

Dr. Hinshaw is providing recommendations for new public health measures to the Priorities Implementation Committee of the provincial cabinet Monday afternoon.

The province is expected to announce new measures on Tuesday.

(With files from David Opinko and Chris Brown, JPBG)