Better contact tracing key for Manitoba Posted: 7:00 PM CST Monday, Nov. 16, 2020

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 16/11/2020 (1805 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Though Manitoba’s recent COVID-19 surge has put the province in a dire position, it is far from an anomalous one. Much of the world is now caught up in an intense second wave of the virus. Hospitals from Texas to France have once again begun to buckle under the pressure of soaring patient numbers; lockdowns which had been relaxed over the summer are being reinstated.

But there is one global regional exception, and that is much of east and southeast Asia. China has kept the virus at bay since the spring; Taiwan and Singapore have sparkling low numbers; South Korea is still doing relatively well. Vietnam, with a population of over 100 million people, reported just 26 new cases of the virus on Wednesday; only 35 people have died of COVID-19 there in total. Meanwhile, Japan is showing signs of a growing third wave, but the daily case counts in Tokyo are below that of Manitoba, which has far fewer people. In all these cases, the number of COVID-19 deaths per 100,000 people is a fraction that of places such as Canada, France or the United States.

What is notable is that many of these countries accomplished this suppression without the type of lockdowns pursued by Canada and Europe. It’s curious that Asia’s evident success against COVID-19 has not been more widely discussed in North American media. Much of Asia has so far figured out how to contain the virus while enabling the social and economic lives of their communities to continue with only mild or moderate disruption; why can’t we?

Much of Asia has so far figured out how to contain the virus while enabling the social and economic lives of their communities to continue with only mild or moderate disruption.

It all comes down to strategy. Early on, most of the countries named above poured massive resources into some combination of testing, expansive contact tracing and quarantine. Japan didn’t test as aggressively as South Korea, but focused on “backtracing,” or determining where a positive case likely contracted the virus and then seeking out other cases from that event — an approach that appears highly effective against a virus such as COVID-19, for which the majority of transmissions are spread by a minority of infected people.

We may have missed our chance to replicate that success in Manitoba, at least for now. We’ve never had a real quarantine strategy, other than being told to stay home but without any added supports. The province will not tell us how many contact tracers it has, but what we do know is that, as the second wave bloomed in Manitoba, contact tracing was almost immediately overwhelmed, often leaving those who tested positive to do tracing themselves. Alberta had similar problems in the last month. It’s impossible to say how many positive cases were missed and went on to infect others as a result of these issues.

Unfortunately, with a test positivity rate now over 10 per cent and widespread community transmission, there is no turning back. It’s too late to beat the virus back with these sorts of approaches; we need the harsher lockdown. But if, over the course of the next month, we can get our numbers back down to manageable levels, we should look to what has worked in other countries, and see what we can learn. It’s clear that contact tracing is key to lasting success against this virus. Will Manitoba find the political will — and the funds — to ensure ours is up to the task?