As Covid spreads like a prairie grass fire in the province, the provincial nurses union are warning that "Leaving contact tracing to the public 'irresponsible".
The Saskatchewan Health Authority announced on Friday it would leave COVID-19 contact tracing to the public, but experts and critics say removing that service will only stress the health-care sector. In a news release, the SHA said that their new "modified approach" to contact tracing will place the responsibility of contact tracing on the COVID-positive person. The change means that the SHA will inform the person who has tested positive about how to trace, and leave it to them. "Leaving this up to the public to do is … absolutely irresponsible, and it's putting all of us at risk," Tracy Zambory, the president of the Saskatchewan Union of Nurses said, calling it an "dereliction of duty" by both the SHA and the government. "We have to be able to understand the transmission in our communities. Without that, we are really in a very vulnerable position." ...
Rising cases have stunted public health resources, the SHA said, making it difficult to contact trace fast enough. Zambory said she's spoken with nurses who feel extremely nervous about the province's current pandemic trajectory. ...
The province reported 389 new cases and 138 people in hospital on Sunday, although Zambory said she's heard from nurses that case numbers could be skewed by a work backlog. Contact tracing was, she said, an important part of Saskatchewan's offensive strategy. Now the health-care system will have to "brace for a storm that we can't see coming." Contact tracing can take hours and Zambory doesn't expect the public to follow-up. Those who do won't be able to do the job as well as trained nurses, she said. Zambory said nurses are feeling "demoralized" and "exhausted" from the overwhelming effect COVID-19 has had in the province.
Carolyn Brost Strom, a registered nurse who is a positive case investigator in the north central area of the province, said in a Twitter thread that nurses are clearly outnumbered in their fight. ...
"You are not going to win the championship (ie: end this pandemic) relying on defence alone (which is hospitals and ICUs), and with players on the injured list or free agency (staff burned out or leaving)," she said. "You need your offence (your testing, case investigations, contact tracing) to put you ahead … We need the public's help (our 13th man) and we need the coach to come back [out] of retirement/sabbatical (the government) to make the right policy decisions (masks, mandatory vaccines, mandate isolation)." Strom said that she, and others like her, need more help "from everyone." ...
Dr. Dennis Kendel, a health policy consultant, calls the government's decision "disappointing, one of the sort of bedrocks of controlling community spread of any virus is the test-trace-isolate triad," he said. "It's analogous to flying in the dark with no instruments ... you're going to crash into something."
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatoon/leaving-contact-tracing-to-the-...