Life inside a busy Covid contact tracing centre in Munster

Contact-tracing calls after a wedding are the hardest calls, says a public health specialist working in the Mid West 

Contact tracers at the Department of Public Health Mid-West. Picture: Keith Wiseman

Phoning someone to say that they have the virus is never easy — but one doctor working in the Mid-West region said contact tracing calls around weddings are the hardest to make.

There have been over 6,500 cases across Limerick, Clare, and North Tipperary in the last two weeks, according to the HSE department of Public Health in the Mid-West.

Non-urgent care at local hospitals, including in Limerick, Ennis, Nenagh, and Croom, has been deferred, leaving hundreds waiting as Covid-19 cases increased.

Director of the unit, Dr Mai Mannix, said she was relieved to see a fall in cases this week, but her fears are for the damage already done.

Director of public health Mid-West Dr Mai Mannix. Picture: Keith Wiseman

“Hospitals in Limerick are under severe strain,” she said. "We need to ensure our numbers go down from here on in. 

The key message is we need people to help us. We cannot sustain the high levels we had before this."

Her work centres around the trails left by ordinary interactions. A simple hug at a wedding can lead to devastation — not just for guests, but also for families and work colleagues.

Dr Mannix said that on numerous occasions they have tracked a web of contacts to find a wedding at its heart.

“God help them,” she said.

We’ve had many weddings. It is hard to make those calls, nobody sets out to do that."

The doctors on her team, who see themselves as disease detectives, compare notes on where positive cases visited. So when a wedding pops up repeatedly on their radar, they contact the bride and groom and ask for a full guest list.

She said: “When we have a couple of cases who were at the same wedding, we go back and offer them all a screening. That is one test per person, to see what is happening.” 

Specialist registrar in public health medicine Dr Allison Deane. Picture: Keith Wiseman

Many working in the hospitality sector publicly pushed against Nphet advice to shut pubs and restaurants.

But Dr Mannix said the advice chimed with what they saw in late December as their work hours ratcheted up to 80 a week.

There were a lot of outbreaks from eating out, we had a number of outbreaks in pubs, some in hotels,” she said. “And sometimes among the staff, they are working so closely together.”

Sport was another area which ignited fears on social media, but Dr Mannix said this is not a clear-cut area.

“We found the on-the-field was fine in terms of people doing the right thing, non-contact and so on,” she said. 

“The issue is the things people do before and after the game — the socialising, really."

And sadly, as in other areas, funerals continue to appear on their screens.

She could not say exactly why there are so many risks associated with these ceremonies, but speculated that based on what they see that numbers are higher than officially permitted.

In one recent outbreak, they found 15 positive cases linked back to one funeral.

“So in one family, one person went to a funeral, that person was positive, and infected several people at the funeral,” said Dr Mannix.

“They went back to their families, and also to a workplace, so a number of people were infected there. And then two or three more people caught it from them. 

“There have been a number of incidences of funerals, that is one big issue for us.”