Sixty infections and the counter is rising. A corona outbreak in a disco in Enschede keeps the GGD Twente quite busy. How do source and contact researchers deal with such outbreaks, now that most measures have been relaxed and more and more people have been vaccinated?
“We still expect a lot of large outbreaks, especially in groups that have been partially or not vaccinated,” says Bas Boogmans, infectious disease control doctor at the GGD Region Utrecht. “This is a problem in particular with young people. They have more contacts and many of them have not yet been fully vaccinated. It can then go quickly.”
It is therefore important that people continue to maintain the 1.5 meters, says Boogmans. He also emphasizes the importance of getting tested if you go to an event where the distance does not have to be kept. “People sometimes have the idea that after a shot they can do everything immediately and let go of the distance. It feels like a kind of liberation, but after a day you are really not protected, you have to wait 14 days.”
Boogmans leads nearly a thousand source and contact researchers in his region. They have less and less to do. “It is still quiet now. We see that people who have become infected have more and more contacts. But that is also logical, now that the measures have been relaxed”.
More focus on the source, less on contacts
Starting next week, the GGD will carry out the source and contact investigation in a slightly different way throughout the Netherlands. The emphasis will be more on finding the source and less on the contacts. Something will also change for people who have been in contact and have been fully vaccinated for at least 14 days: they will no longer have to be quarantined.
“We are now working on different scenarios, for example what would happen if we get a more contagious variant and we get someone on the test street who has that variant,” says Boogmans. “How can we trace the source of the infection as quickly as possible in such a case? We used to monitor all contacts, now we would prefer to investigate all places where that person has been. Which place is most likely? we take targeted measures to prevent such an outbreak from getting bigger.”
Different from last year
From now on, the GGD is therefore concerned with putting out ‘little fires’ quickly. Informing contacts will be less necessary, because the older contacts in particular are often already vaccinated. This is immediately the big difference with last year: young people in particular infect their parents after the holidays, who in turn are colleagues. Boogmans assumes that this will not happen again, because of the vaccinations.
“The next step is that we get a better picture of infections within certain groups with few vaccinated people. If the infections occur in particular in certain neighborhoods or especially in a religious belief, then you want to be on top of it.”
A previously intended scaling down the contact investigation doesn’t seem to go into effect for the time being. RIVM reported last week that, in response to an OMT advice, a plan was being worked on in which infected people in principle inform their contacts themselves. This plan is shelved for the time being; the GGD intends to inform all close contacts itself for the time being.
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