Pool of contact tracers grows as cases rise

Singapore's pool of contact tracers at the Ministry of Health (MOH) has grown from 300 to about 500 to tackle the recent jump in Covid-19 cases, with more contagious variants of the virus having surfaced.

The ministry said it is vital that close contacts of infected patients be identified swiftly and isolated to shut down further spread of the coronavirus.

The bulk of the new manpower at MOH's contact tracing centre is from the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF), which provided about 160 individuals.

Separately, the police contracted three organisations in a $327,000 tender awarded last month to provide supporting manpower.

More details were not available from the police, but it is understood that last year, a similar tender was called. The police have lent help to contact tracing efforts here since last year.

Professor Vernon Lee, who heads the MOH contact tracing centre, told The Sunday Times that the current number of 500 tracers is still less than at the height of the two-month circuit breaker, which began in April last year.

At one point then, the centre had about 1,000 people to cope with the huge volume of new daily virus cases, which could exceed 1,000 on some days. In comparison, new daily cases in the past two months have rarely been more than 50.

The recent spike in cases prompted the Government last month to put in place extra safety measures, returning Singapore to heightened alert under phase two of its reopening, from phase three.

This year's spike is smaller than last year's, but the contact tracing has expanded in volume.

"Each case is now more complex because of the availability of a lot more data," said Prof Lee. This includes TraceTogether data, which automatically logs a Covid-19 patient's close contacts.

More than 90 per cent of the population use either the TraceTogether app or token. This means that more resources are needed to analyse the data, but tracers are now working smarter with more data analysis tools, said Prof Lee.

Geospatial tools, for instance, help find potential links between cases through their locations. Such tools reportedly helped the authorities figure out that a Bukit Merah View wet market was the source of many recent infections.

Compared with last year, close contacts must be quickly found because of more transmissible Covid-19 variants, Prof Lee said.

Tests are also conducted in targeted ways to help tracers zero in on suspected cases faster. For instance, people at Housing Board blocks, shops and markets where cases surfaced have been tested.

"With all these tools, we were able to identify cases, test them faster and ring-fence them," said Prof Lee. "We felt that we didn't need go into a circuit breaker as we were able to control the numbers just before phase two (heightened alert)."

Contact tracer Faris Abdul Wahab, 50, said data such as that from TraceTogether helps fill in gaps as more people use the system, but he still needs to verify the information with cases. And when calling them, the human touch is vital.

Mr Faris, a flight steward with Singapore Airlines, said communication issues are among the biggest challenges.

People can be uncooperative, aggressive and abusive on the phone. And some, like migrant workers, may simply not speak English well.

"We try to be patient," Mr Faris said.

They may have to ask questions in different ways to get answers.

But most people are cooperative.

Said Lieutenant Isabel Seah, 22, an SAF infantry officer: "We're always appreciative when they're very patient with us because contact tracing can be quite tedious."