By Thobeka Ngema 
Jul 2, 2021
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Durban – A source close to the Department of Health has expressed concern after reports that key components of Covid-19 contact tracking and tracing were, “put on hold”.
“In the recent three or four weeks, there has been a pull-back on those systems which then raises the question: what mechanisms are in place to continue with the active tracing of the virus? Because, in the context of not having a fully vaccinated society or at least having reached the benchmark for herd immunity, you would want to be as active as possible in trying to curb the spread by locating and isolating those that are infected and potentially infected.”
The source said the situation pre-dated acting Health Minister Mmamoloko Kubayi, alleging it was a decision taken by the director-general, Dr Sandile Buthelezi. “That raised a lot of concerns as to what the strategy was if crucial initiatives were being slowed down.”
The source felt Kubayi may not be aware of the fact that the system was not up and running and the department might be flying blindly in terms of the quality and the ability to track and trace.
“I’m not saying contact tracing as a whole is put on hold, but key components of it seem to have fallen off, and I’m not sure of the quality of that tracing now. It would be interesting to find out how they’re continuing to help the physical tracers locate the cases on the ground because the system used for that has been instructed to switch off, the Bluetooth app has also been instructed for switch off,” the source said.
“The system would show you the hotspots of where the flare-ups are and guide the department in decision-making on where to direct their focus, in terms of interventions and distribution of personal protective equipment and other required resources.”
Many countries, including South Africa, had gone the digital route, leveraging technology as part of the proactive initiatives to isolate the disease. There were a couple of platforms that were in place, built by different stakeholders, and some were offered for free to the department.
“I haven’t begun to see the full impact of it, certainly it has nothing to do with the third wave, but we are going to be going into another wave… we’re probably going to see a massive impact of the third wave because obviously we are left to fly blindly as a country. I think that is the real concern,” the source said.
“They probably have no clue what the hotspots are, the flare-ups are and we just have the naked statistics, that are coming through from the National Institute for Communicable Diseases from a lab perspective in terms of the actual numbers in circulation, but not in terms of insights into that data and proper analytics for decision making.”
The National Health Department had not commented by the time of publication.
KZN Health MEC Nomagugu Simelane said the technology they used was never the main or primary strategy for tracking and tracing.
“The tracking and tracing that we are implementing in the province, first of all, says, once you have your primary case or index case, we must within 12 hours have contacted all their other contacts or as many contacts as possible. So, that is something we do physically and does not rely on the technology.”
“The technology is just there to assist us in picking up where there might be gaps but it is meant to be an add-on. Our tracking-and-tracing process and system has always been in place, continues to be in place.”
When Kubayi appeared before the portfolio committee on health on June 17, she said: “We had a meeting with the MECs across the provinces, where we were re-emphasising the issue of testing, the issue of tracing, the issue of isolating, the issue of treating.”
Deputy director-general Dr Anban Pillay said 10 intervention areas were prepared to mitigate and respond to a Covid-19 resurgence in South Africa. “One is the epidemiological response around monitoring the cases, laboratory turnaround times, information systems to share that information and make sure we’re able to react, and critical is our contact tracing and community screening, so that we can identify outbreaks and close those outbreaks down as soon as possible.”
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