Contact tracing on the assembly line

Created: 01/18/2022, 22:12

By: Marc Kniepkamp

Time and again, late quarantine orders from the health department (GSR) cause a lack of understanding - our newspaper has also reported on cases in which the order was only issued after the quarantine had expired.

In response to a request from city councilors Gabriele Neff (FDP) and Hans Theiss (CSU), the GSR has now explained in more detail how contact tracing works.

Mayor Dieter Reiter in the Contact Tracing Center of the City of Munich in Hall C2 in the exhibition center © Marcus Schlaf

According to this, a total of around 500 people are currently busy tracing contacts every day - both in the exhibition hall in Riem and in the home office. In addition, the GSR is still looking for employees for contact tracing. The city council had approved 421 full-time positions in December, and so far 440 additional employees have been hired, which corresponds to a total of about 322 full-time positions. By the end of January, 358 of the new employees should have started work, which corresponds to around 265 full-time positions. Because these are mostly external people, they have to be familiarized with the processes of a city administration in addition to their task.

But why does it take so long for people who tested positive to be contacted?

This is mainly due to the reporting process.

The positive PCR tests are reported by the laboratories to the German Electronic Reporting and Information System (DEMIS), which is based at the Robert Koch Institute.

Depending on the workload of the laboratory, this transmission alone can often only take place a few days after the test.

If a test is noted in DEMIS, the contact tracers can access it.

The goal of the GSR: 24 hours after a data record has been received, it should also be processed.

Telephone numbers or e-mail addresses of those who tested positive are not always given, and sometimes the data is also incorrect.

In addition, several reports can be received for each infected person, which then have to be assigned to existing data records.

Current figures from the GSR show how much the workload in contact tracing has increased due to the increased number of cases.

Last Friday, for example, 5219 reports were received, including 2072 new infections.

Three weeks earlier there were 800 reports and 344 new infections.