(The Canadian Press)

By Troy Gillard

There’s a backlog

Alberta making more changes to COVID-19 contact tracing

Nov 23, 2020 | 5:12 PM

With the significant increase in new COVID-19 cases and demand, the Alberta Health Services contact tracing team is facing a slowly growing backlog.

To maximize the impact of case investigation and contact tracing, the province says AHS will not call diagnosed cases who are no longer infectious.

Instead of working in sequence, AHS will start with the most recently diagnosed cases to reach as many recent cases as possible. This will have the greatest benefit in preventing further transmission.

Anyone not receiving a call will receive a text message from AHS providing them with guidance on if and when their isolation period has ended.

Starting Tuesday (Nov. 24), all Albertans who test positive for COVID-19 will also receive a text message to notify them when their isolation period will end.

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The province says AHS continues to work to further increase its teams of contact tracers.

Dr. Deena Hinshaw, Alberta’s chief medical officer of health, said Monday that the focus must be on looking forward and “using the contact tracers where they have the greatest impact.”

She reinforced that anyone diagnosed with COVID-19 must stay home and distanced from all others, even members of their own household until 10 days have passed from the start of their symptoms or until their symptoms resolve, whichever is longer.

Hinshaw also said that because AHS will not be able to get to every case currently in the backlog, they may not be able to track every case linked to a school in the past two weeks. She said the best way to protect schools is to lower community transmission.