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At eight in the morning the police were at Benjamin Hermann’s house. “The agents ran through the corridors and called my name until they found me,” says the 23-year-old who lives in a shared apartment. “I felt like a criminal.”
The police were looking for him because the Canton of Zurich contact tracing could not locate him. She told him in the early hours of the morning that she had to inform them immediately. “Finally they gave me a sheet of paper with a number I should call.” It was the phone number of the doctor in the canton of Zurich. Ironically, the number Benjamin Hermann had called days ago. It has been a week since he tested positive for the coronavirus.
Infected in the Zurich nightclub
He himself could have been infected on a Saturday at a Zurich nightclub. The first symptoms began Tuesday: headache, chills, fever. On Wednesday he did a crown test at the Hirslanden Clinic in Zurich. On Thursday he received a positive test result from the central laboratory, which started the chaos of persecution.
Explosive number of cases: Contact trackers have lost control(00:44)
“They informed me that Contact Tracing would call me. But nothing came. “Benjamin Hermann was waiting for a code that he should have entered into the Swiss-Covid application so that those around him who also installed the application could find out about a possible infection and go into quarantine. The application contains a number at the you should call if you haven’t received a code two hours after the positive test result. “So I called there,” says Benjamin Hermann. “Several times. But I have no information, no code. “Then he contacted the central laboratory, where they asked him to appear before the canton doctor.” It was a coming and going.
Two days later, he received the code from the cantonal doctor. Meanwhile, two other people in his neighborhood had been tested for the virus and also given him as a contact person, with his mobile phone number and email address. The nightclub where you were previously partying also had your contact details and probably passed it on to Contact Tracing. However, Benjamin Hermann was never contacted, except by the police, a week after the positive test result. “That was strange. I never got feedback from contact trackers. What happens there? “
Zurich is not alone
Contact tracers are on their way through Switzerland. Bern already warned at the end of July that the zenith would soon be reached. At that time, the cantonal police stepped in to operate all the phones. In early November, both Basles announced that contact trackers were overwhelmed. Baselland turned to an outside company for help, while Basel-Stadt dropped contact tracing across the board. The canton of Appenzell Innerrhoden appealed to the population for help because the team could not keep up with the rapidly increasing number of cases. And the canton of Zurich, which also partially outsourced the tracking to an outside company, continued to appeal to the population to take responsibility and initiative. On November 5, the Zurich governing council approved an additional 3.25 million francs for the extension of contact tracing.
Benjamin Hermann’s initiative was of little use in his case. “Of course, I informed those around me about my illness. But I don’t know everyone who was in the same club that weekend, for example. “This is what the Covid app is intended for, and with it a functional contact tracing responsible for breaking the chain of infection.
Criticism from within
It fails precisely at this junction. “It can’t even work this way,” says Lars Huber *. He has been working as a contact tracker for the canton of Zurich for several months. “We are not necessarily very few people,” he says. “Maybe we were at the beginning. But now more and more are being hired. The problem is: no one is properly trained or trained. “New plotters will receive a multi-page sheet of paper with everything they need to find them. But this guide is also incomplete.” In the end, each person works as they see fit. That results in dozens of possible solutions, which logically leads to chaos. “
It is frustrating to work there. “You had more than six months to optimize the system. Because the increasing number of cases in the winter months has long been noticed. “But the tracking processes are anything but efficient today.” They are flawed and nothing is done about it. “It often happened that they were not Entire lists of people were entered into the system, and thus infected people were never contacted via contact tracing.
In Zurich, contact trackers ask the infected to provide their contact persons by email. “Each person does it differently, which means a lot more work for us,” says Lars Huber. In Bern, for example, infected people are given a link to an online form where closest contacts can be entered into a list and their data can be accessed by trackers.
Solutions are sought
Many cantons handle the procedure differently. It is not clear which is the most efficient. “We don’t know all the forms of organization,” announced the GDK cantonal health directors conference. However, it is clear that contact tracing “currently has loopholes and delays almost everywhere.” This could mean that the delivery of data from the cantons to the Federal Office of Public Health is incomplete.
“The cantons have made adjustments to the processes or the way contact persons are notified,” the GDK said. An example of this is the canton of Aargau: civil protection has supported contact tracing since the end of October. Contact establishment is now prioritized according to characteristics such as age and institutions, and infected people are asked to contact close contacts.
“In addition, the FOPH is currently in the process of establishing a contact tracing database that will be regularly and rapidly supplied with data from the cantonal databases,” according to the GDK. Most of the technical interfaces for the various systems have already been completed. “The federal government, together with the canton’s doctors and the Scientific Working Group, has already defined what data the cantons should provide.”
The optimization processes are ongoing. They must ensure that the virus can be contained more and that the chains of infection are broken. Only now we are in late fall. Did the cantons prepare too slowly and unprepared for the growing number of cases? “The problem is not the increase in the number of cases per se, but the speed,” says the GDK. The cantons have continuously expanded their capacities during the summer. “However, the high number of cases that had to be treated each day in individual cantons could not be handled with significantly larger teams.”
* Name changed by publisher
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This article was taken from “Observer” magazine. You can find more interesting articles at www.beobachter.ch
