Contact tracers drown: risk contacts get text messages

The Flemish contact tracing will send high-risk contacts an SMS instead of calling.

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Contact tracing in Brussels and Wallonia had to be released earlier, now contact tracing in Flanders can no longer follow. Since Friday, high-risk contacts have been sent a text message instead of being called. ‘We will continue to call all infected persons to ask about their contacts,’ says Joris Moonens, spokesperson for the Agency for Care and Health. “But the epidemic is going very fast now.”

From Thursday to Friday, the number of infected persons to be called has increased by more than a third, from 2,800 to 3,700. “Since one infected person reports multiple contacts, the number of high-risk contacts that we have to call has increased much more.” Their number has doubled in one day. Moonens: ‘To be able to inform everyone quickly about their quarantine and test, we therefore switched to texting instead of phone calls on Friday.’

High-risk contacts will receive three text messages: a first with the notification that they are a risk contact, must be quarantined and tested, a second with an activation code for a test and a third with a link to a website for more information.

Sending a text message is not the same as having a persistent conversation. ‘If people have not understood the explanation properly, they can always ask questions’, says Moonens.

‘That’s why we keep calling as many people as possible. When all infected persons have been called and there is still time left, we will call high-risk contacts. But the reality is that the epidemic is moving so fast that we are getting more orders than we can currently handle. The contact follow-up will do its part to the maximum, but now it comes down to defeating the virus collectively. ‘

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