Chennai: An initial test of the University of Otago’s contact tracing system for Covid-19 has produced promising results after most contacts identified in the emergency exercise scenario of a visiting international professor to the Dunedin campus were able to be tracked down.
Chair of the University’s infectious disease emergency planning group, Professor Philip Hill, explains that being a multi-campus university with 20,000 students and about 4000 staff, it is imperative to have an effective and efficient contact tracing system. The University of Otago has established a contact tracing system centralised on tracking individuals using its high capability wireless network, augmented by other data available through its information technology systems.
“We decided to carry out this test because it is one thing to set up an information system, but another for it to be proven to be fit for purpose, which is to provide the right information over the right time frame,” Professor Hill explains.
“With Covid-19 your systems have to perform at the right level of quality under time pressure to be useful. We wanted to see if our system is as good as we think it is and we also wanted to let others around the country benefit from seeing what we are doing and decide if their systems might benefit from such an evaluation.”