Hygienists will prefer to trace children and people over the age of 65 due to the omicron
Updates: 01/17/2022 18:26
Released: 17.01.2022, 15:23
Prague – Hygienists will prefer to trace coronavirus infants under the age of 18 and over 65 and working in inpatient social services facilities, such as homes for the elderly. The others will receive an SMS to fill in the self-admission form. The spokesman of the Ministry of Health, Ondřej Jakob, told ČTK. The reason is the expected high number of people infected in the growing wave of the epicron caused by the omicron variant. According to the latest data on the Sunday trace, hygienists are currently able to contact about a third of newly positive and three-quarters of risky contacts within 24 hours. However, the success of tracing varies in the regions, with Prague having the most unresolved cases.
“Priority groups are being defined, which will be addressed as a matter of priority in the event of confirmation of the covid-19 disease, and their epidemiologically significant contacts will be traced through a telephone call in the call system,” Jakob said.
According to him, such a procedure is in accordance with the recommendations of the World Health Organization (WHO) and the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC). “The epidemiological inquiry of the other groups will also be carried out using a self-tracking form, which people will be asked to fill in via SMS after confirmation of the covid-19 disease,” he added.
Self-tracking forms were completed last week between 6,500 and 8,000 infected daily. There were almost 2,000 of them in Prague alone on Sunday and almost a thousand in the Central Bohemian Region. Since the beginning of the form, almost 700,000 people have filled in the form, which is about a quarter of all positive cases since the beginning of the epidemic. Hygienists data use for tracing and any phone call may be shorter.
“Self-tracing of infected and risky contacts works well. Please use it for everyone who has a smartphone or computer, according to the instructions in the SMS. (…) At the same time, we have implemented a strategy of automatic quarantine processing in companies and schools.” they wrote on twitter representatives of Smart Quarantine. People who sign up with a positive test by their employer or school will receive an SMS message that their five-day quarantine is beginning. At the same time, until another report with a request for a PCR test, if they develop symptoms and would like to take the test.
Trace data shows that on the working days of last week, about 40 percent of new positive and 75 percent of risky contacts were collected within 24 hours. Hygienists and employees of the Smart Call Quarantine external call centers called for more than 100,000 minutes on weekdays, and there were over 30,000 calls. It was even more than 125,000 minutes on Wednesday and over 35,000 calls on Thursday. On weekdays last week, 11,500 to 13,200 people tested positive. External routes were involved over 900 per day, hygienists 500 to 735 per day.
Tracing success varies by region. While in Prague, which deals with an extreme increase in new cases, only eight positive percent can be contacted within 24 hours, in the Moravian-Silesian, Ústí nad Labem and South Bohemian regions it is over 70 percent. Prague also has the lowest 7-day average of shaken risky contacts. In the last week it is 2.24, more than four, on the other hand, are in the Pardubice and Karlovy Vary regions, where there are fewer inhabitants.
