Investigators ‘challenged’ to keep up with public exposure notices

Public health investigators are “challenged” in keeping up with cases and issuing public exposure notices in a timeframe that would seem ideal, said Nova Scotia’s chief medical officer of health.

In a recent COVID briefing, Dr. Robert Strang said identifying a positive case, interviewing people to find places they were at and doing a risk assessment for an exposure notice, does take time, and that has not been helped by the recent spike in COVID cases.

“Clearly, we are slower than would be ideal,” said Strang. “It is just a simple fact of the volume of cases that we’re dealing with. And that’s one of the reasons why we need to act now and bring things back under control. Public health is absolutely stretched to the max. Our testing capacity is stretched as far as we can go.”

“We’re looking at innovative ways, but we have to acknowledge that our healthcare system is already beginning to be impacted. We need everybody to understand that they need to do what they can do to help us in the healthcare system out and bring the virus back under control.”

In Truro, employees left the Robie Street Starbucks the evening of Friday, April 23, to isolate themselves after being contacted by public health, and the business was closed for deep cleaning on Saturday. The potential exposure risk was publicly issued by the health authority at 11:24 p.m. Monday evening.

Not all potential exposures are identified publicly, Nova Scotia Public Health Authority spokesperson Carla Adams said, in an email. When an investigation reveals an exposure at a given company or business, public health will contact them to provide next steps.

In situations where contact information is available to contact attendees directly, such as staff at a business or an event that had contact tracing, a public notice may not need to be issued.

“The timeline under which we connect with a business or organization depends on a lot of factors in connection with the investigation,” said Adams. “Public health is working as hard to complete investigations as quickly and accurately as possible during this significant increase in COVID-19 cases across the province.”

On Saturday, April 24, the Yarmouth Links golf course and country club posted on Facebook that it was closing after learning it potentially had an exposure. No public notice was issued, and only public health is permitted to communicate specific times.

The golf course is an example of some businesses proactively sharing that information as an added precaution. This is not a requirement by public health. However, Strang said that anything to support COVID prevention helps.

“If businesses can help support, get that message out, all the better,” said Strang.

Since a province-wide shutdown started on April 28, only essential services have remained open, until at least May 12.