Authorities completely overloaded with contact tracing in Salzburg
In Salzburg, the authorities can no longer follow up on the contacts of infected people. In view of the high number of new corona cases every day, in many cases only those who tested positive are segregated. But even here, employees are dying in contact tracing: those affected reported that they had to wait up to six days for their rejection notice.
“The focus right now is on the index people and, if there is still time, on the household members and vulnerable groups.
At the end of October, representatives from the city and the country had assured that the contacts of infected people were still being traced for 48 hours as planned. Governor Wilfried Haslauer (ÖVP) had indicated on Tuesday evening on the sidelines of a press conference that this would no longer work quickly.
Haslauer announces more staff
He announced that he would make 50 more employees available to the district authorities – according to Haslauer, retired state employees are to be brought in. The situation in the state capital’s magistrate was recently “dramatic and threatening”, as Astrid Reichl-Marko, the head of the health department, said positively. Around 900 follow-up cases in the city of Salzburg have not yet been processed. The contact tracing is lagging two to three days behind despite the longest duration.
In order to relax the situation, the city library will be converted into another contact tracing point from next Saturday – now third are dying in the state capital. It is then no longer possible to borrow books, and all 15 employees are used to track contact persons. Most recently, around 80 employees, including 18 soldiers from the armed forces, were deployed in the city. “We are, of course, intensively looking for more helpers in other departments of the municipal authorities and from outside,” says Michael Haybäck, head of the district administration.
SPÖ: “failure repeats itself”
For the SPÖ – the Social Democrats are in opposition in the Salzburg state parliament – the ÖVP-led state government did not react or responded much too late. “After contact tracking was broken last year, this failure was repeated a year later,” criticized club chairman Michael Wanner in a broadcast. “After the breakdown of contact tracing in schools and childcare facilities, the rest of the contact tracing has now imploded as well.”
In its highest escalation level, the five-step plan for contact tracing presented by the state at the beginning of July currently provides for measures “from 3,250 people infected at the same time” and “700 to 900 new infections daily”. According to EMS, 13,634 people were infected at the same time in Salzburg on Wednesday, the number of new infections was over a thousand. As the APA reported, the armed forces could now be involved in contact tracing by requesting assistance.