Covid 19 Part XXVII- 62,002 ROI (1,915 deaths) 39,609 NI (724 deaths) (02/11) Read OP

E36Ross wrote: »

Stopped at a checkpoint this morning and asked if I was out working.......


I drive a bus.

That would have been funny if it was true.

joe40 wrote: »

Nphet and the HSE are totally different organization. The HSE were not fully in favour of this lockdown. They weren't even informed of the level 5 recommendation from Nphet 2 weeks ago.

There's 10 members of HSE on NPHET including Colm Henry their COO so would think they would have to have known.

joe40 wrote: »

Nphet and the HSE are totally different organization. The HSE were not fully in favour of this lockdown. They weren't even informed of the level 5 recommendation from Nphet 2 weeks ago.

You are basing that on a vague tweet from Reid?

He said 4 days later we had 10 days to save health care.

Ignore him.

Hector Savage wrote: »

Scaremongering hyperbole horse sh1t

It's not scare mongering. It is the reality of the situation. These things have all happened. It's typical denier behaviour. Dismiss the facts and call them bull**** without offering up a reasonable explanation for what is obvious. Covid19 is not the flu. Why is it so difficult to accept? Pandemics happen all the time. It is a reality of life.

Qiaonasen wrote: »

In the long run, the pandemic might be the kick up the arse the government and HSE need to overcome decades of mismanagement.

it should be

but won't

niallo27 wrote: »

I just think there is way too much trust put in an organisation that is made of people that have been in charge of one of the worst health systems in Europe.

This just shows utter ignorance

NPHET have zero role in the running of the HSE

Government fears Nphet will seek new lockdown after Christmas break

Ministers hope it may be possible to move down to Level 4 earlier than planned

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/health/government-fears-nphet-will-seek-new-lockdown-after-christmas-break-1.4386974

We haven't even hit day 1 of this lockdown and we already have another one to look forward to

Qiaonasen wrote: »

In the long run, the pandemic might be the kick up the arse the government and HSE need to overcome decades of mismanagement.

Ahh it won't be though. You can kick a dead cat all day long - but it will never bring it back. We'll have a few inquiries, sure, and be done with it after that. Be grand.

Stheno wrote: »

it's all a bit depressing

Very

Lockdown seems to be the one and only tool that NPHET have to deal with the virus

billybonkers wrote: »

23,000 calls over last week contract tracing did. That's is 137 calls every hour of every day.
I wonder how many people are on the tracing team? why did they not just hire 500 or so people to do it? The call went out months ago for people available on contract basis!!
If they had 500 doing it, it would be around 2 calls per day working 8 hours!!

billybonkers wrote: »

Well then that is beyond a joke.
2.43 calls per day over 8 working hours. How is that not sufficient.

Drumpot wrote: »

Is contact tracing really that difficult a job to learn? There’s no way we could of trained up a lot more people in the last 6 months?

ixoy wrote: »

How does a contact trace even work? They still need the names from the person who tested positive and the phone numbers from them (the team are unlikely to have access). So are they just ringing those people up? Do they ring up the workplace, if any, as well? Shops visited? And, previously, restaurants/pubs?

Contact tracing was initially performed by healthcare workers who were redeployed as their work decreased with the pandemic.
When cases fell, these healtchare workers went back to their day jobs.

Contact tracing wasn't ever really a full time job. The system, had to be elastic; capable of having enough tracers to meet demand and not having too many tracers time taken up when cases were really low. There wasn't 450 people sitting around doing nothing during the summer, they went back to their normal roles.

Contact tracing is performed under the Public Health department.
Public Health has long been short staffed and under resourced. Staff cannot be plucked and trained off the street. Collecting a lot of personal information on hundreds of people has to be handled properly.

I posted this link before, but this is the process of contact tracing from Dr. Marie Casey, a public helath Dr. https://twitter.com/marietcasey/status/1313896089376956416

1. Positive result gets fed into the National Contact tracing IT system where it enters a queue.
2. The person is notified of their result by the first caller. They will also collect the enhanced data about them. This includes chronic disease risk factors etc. The caller advises them that he will shortly receive another call collecting their contacts for the 48 hours before his symptoms.
3. The person goes away to think about who he was in contact with in that time and collects their mobile numbers. A caller will collect these.
4. The call centre collects basic details on the places and businesses the person visited and records them as ”complex contacts”. These are tagged in the system for the Department of Public Health For that area to follow up (pubs cafes, sport etc)
5. Regional Departments of Public Health deal with these contacts. Then based on that risk assessment they then contact those businesses.They ask them about their staff, protective measures in place, exposure time to determine whether they are cosidered close contacts.
6. Often the business has to go away and check logs and get details. It’s complicated and time consuming. They add these contacts to the national IT system so they will be booked for a follow up call and swabs.

Dr. Casey also mentions in a subsequent tweet that it is getting hard for them to recruit people to do tracing as they are getting abused by the public.

It is a long and complicated process depending on the number of contacts a person has. Reducing your number of contacts not only prevents the spread of infection but it makes tracing a hell of a lot easier.