Police have set up checkpoints around the country to stop people who were planning on traveling during the Covid-19 lockdown. Video / Dean Purcell
As the importance of efficient contact tracing ramps up, Northland's medical officials are confident the region's health service is up to the task.
This week, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern identified efficient contact tracing as one of three key areas New Zealand needed to prioritise to avoid mass outbreak of Covid-19once out of lockdown.
The contact tracing process refers to how public health units manage the spread of infectious diseases and reduce the chances of community-wide outbreaks.
With reference to Covid-19, the process starts when a test returns positive. At that point, a medical officer of health contacts the person who has tested positive as soon as possible.
People who test positive are required to spend at least 10 days in isolation and are only considered recovered after they have been free of symptoms for 48 hours - something which could take weeks.
From there, the medical officer evaluates the person's health and wellbeing before determining where and how they might have caught the virus - either through travel, contact with a known case or community transmission.
Once this is established, the person is asked to identify all their contacts from 48 hours prior to their onset date - the day they first felt symptoms - until they were contacted with their test result.
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Contacts are split into two groups - close and casual contacts. A close contact is someone who has been within about 2m of a positive case for more than 15 minutes without any protective gear.
Anyone who interacted with a positive case but falls outside this definition is considered a casual contact.
Close contacts are then put into quarantine for 14 days from the date they were last exposed to the positive case, while casual contacts are advised to look out for symptoms.
Both positive cases and close contacts are contacted daily to assess their progression. This was done through either a call or text from a nurse, or an automated email with a checklist designed to assess a person's symptoms and wellbeing.
The process can be a difficult one, especially if a positive case had made contact with different people regularly before knowing they carried the virus.
Northland medical officer of health Dr Catherine Jackson is helping refine the region's contact tracing efforts. Photo / Liz Inch
However, Northland medical officer of health Dr Catherine Jackson believed the region's health service was well-prepared to track down any potential cases quickly.
"This is something that public health is very experienced in doing," Jackson said.
"Our nurses are very good detectives because we keep good contact with people, and we're always really nice and helpful to the people we are looking after."
As one of three medical officers of health in Northland, Jackson had contacted about six of Northland's 24 positive cases and said all had coped well with the news.
"We've been really lucky in Northland, our people are really good about answering our questions and giving us information."
Joshua Dent (right), Northland's first confirmed case of Covid-19, was one of many Dr Jackson had called to inform him of his test result, seen here with his father Sam. Photo / Supplied
Jackson said a key priority was to assure a person of their privacy because some people who had tested positive had experienced online bullying.
"Some people find that very distressing, these are normal, everyday folk who are not generally in the public eye," she said.
"We are very clear to them about what we will tell people, their privacy and confidentiality is really important."
Northland currently had 22 confirmed and two probable cases, including six who had recovered. On Tuesday, Jackson confirmed that all known close contacts relating to Northland's cases had been contacted within 24 hours.
Jackson, who started working in Northland in June last year, said last year's measles outbreak - which numbered 134 cases - illustrated the Northland District Health Board's capacity to contact trace Covid-19 cases.
"We had more cases in a week with our measles outbreak than we are even close to having with Covid-19 in Northland, so we have quite a big capacity for contact tracing so I'm not concerned that we are anywhere near our capacity."
As part of the Government's plan to amplify contact tracing efforts, Ardern said this week an app designed to immediately notify contacts of a positive case was in production.
Ardern also said she would be contacting the Singaporean government for further information on its Bluetooth-based app TraceTogether, which could record interactions between a phone and any other phones nearby that have the app installed.
While Jackson accepted New Zealand's culture was not as welcoming to this form of information gathering as other countries, she said these initiatives would help streamline the contact tracing process.
"The process of calling someone every day, even with a big phone centre, is not efficient and so that's why I'm a big proponent of what we are using with a digital checklist and I think that could be better if it was more systematic across our system."
Casting an eye to the future, Jackson said the outcome of Northland's contact tracing efforts depended on the actions of everyone, something she was confident in after last year's measles outbreak.
"We should have had a much larger outbreak and we didn't because Northlanders are really good at following public health advice.
"The success of any outbreak management relies on people doing what they are asked to do and I've found Northlanders to do that really well."
