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A MAN who was unable to restrict his movements after returning to Ireland from a trip abroad caused at least 56 people to become infected with the coronavirus, including up to ten homes, and a sports team.
The sobering example of how Covid-19 can spread rapidly within the community was revealed Monday in a report released by the Mid West Department of Public Health, when the region surpassed its 3,000th case.
“In total, 56 cases were infected from the index case, affecting up to 10 private homes and a sports team,” the report indicates.
The index case “was abroad while on vacation, but did not restrict her movements under current HSE guidelines when she got home.”
At first she had “mild symptoms including a runny nose and a mild sore throat”, and her “temperature was normal”.
“He was reassured by this and socialized with a group of friends and then tested positive for Covid-19. However, at this stage, he had already infected several of his friends; three of these friends came to infect their families. “
Source: Department of Public Health, Midwest
“Another friend that he infected felt unwell and contacted his GP to arrange a Covid-19 test. He took the exam in the morning, but in the afternoon he felt a little better and decided to go to a friend’s party. ”
“After the party, she got her test result and it came back positive. By attending the party while waiting for his test result, he ended up infecting other people. “
As the index case “has a close extended family that visits each other’s homes regularly, this led to some members of the extended family also becoming infected with Covid-19.”
“One of his extended family members who had no symptoms played a game for his home team and several of his teammates became infected as a result.”
The team members then infected “several people.”
There were 1,894 confirmed cases of Covid-19 in the region up to and including midnight on September 19, of which 293 had been hospitalized and one in five were healthcare workers.
That number has risen by more than 1,100 in the past four weeks.
Until August 1, there were 93 deaths in the region, of which 80 were classified as “confirmed cases” and 13 were “probable or possible cases”.
The median age at death was 83 years; six (6.5%) of the cases that died were admitted to intensive care units; and the majority of the cases (88.2%) that died had an underlying clinical condition.
As of September 27, there were approximately 29,300 COVID-19 swabs processed at public hospitals run by UL Hospitals Group, plus 700 at private Bon Secours, Barringtons, as well as an undisclosed number at the National Virus Reference Laboratory. .
The NVRL had processed about 605,000 swabs from across the country during the same period.
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The report also highlighted “significant underinvestment in an appropriate national IT outbreak and case management system for public health.”
He said that the Department has “struggled in the absence of adequate IT infrastructure” and that, “to ensure that we can address COVID-19 in an effective, timely and efficient manner, it is necessary to improve processes, communication, provision of staff and ICT moving forward “.
He noted the rapid development of a “CMP (Compact Management Program) system, nationwide, to allow contact tracing of non-complex cases.”
“The development of this system was welcomed and reduced the burden of contact tracing on local public health departments. So far it has no capacity to assist in case investigation, identification or outbreak management, although it is planned. “
The report adds that “the use of multiple ICT systems to capture case / outbreak data creates an undue administrative burden within the department.”
The Department’s operation in the Midwest developed an OMS (Outbreak Management System) “to assist with contact tracing and identifying COVID-19 outbreaks” locally, a process it describes as “difficult to go through in the midst of managing a pandemic “.
While OMS “has been very helpful to the clinical staff within the department,” it has also been “challenging from a data quality perspective.”
The WHO “does not interact with the national surveillance system CIDR (Computerized Infectious Disease Notification System)”, and “continuous computer support is needed to allow data linking between the systems.”
Meanwhile, the report added that a “continued development” of “robotic transfer of data from CMP to CIDR, as well as” robotic processing of results and creation of cases “was” a welcome addition. ”
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