Contact tracers feel ‘thrown on the scrapheap’ amid latest Covid-19 wave

Contact tracers have warned that they are being “thrown on the scrapheap” amid a new Covid-19 wave and that this could threaten the State’s ability to respond if there is a major resurgence of the disease.

A group of contact tracers has written to a range of Opposition politicians in recent days outlining their concerns and how they have flagged them to senior figures across the health and political systems.

The letter claims that clinical contact tracers are being asked to reapply for lower-grade positions and have been told that their contracts will end on June 30th unless they do so. They have raised their concerns with HSE chief executive Paul Reid and Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly.

The letter outlines that some contact tracers who have worked on thousands of cases since the beginning of the pandemic are “extremely concerned” at plans to scale down the number of people providing the service, which they say will be detrimental to its quality. They claim management has decided to “dispense with the most experienced contact tracers which will inevitably lead to a major gap in the institutional memory of the service”.

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“We honestly feel like we have been used and are now being thrown on the employment scrapheap even though we strongly feel that we are very much still needed in contact tracing,” they wrote, adding that their skills would be needed to “react quickly to changing situations around Covid, particularly if there is a major resurgence of the disease”.

Covid-19 case numbers are again climbing, with HSE chief clinical officer Dr Colm Henry saying the service was “very concerned” about the increase. He said only 311,000 of the 700,000 people entitled to a second booster vaccine dose had received one.

In a reply to a parliamentary question from Independent TD for Galway East Seán Canney last Friday, HSE head of testing and tracing Damien McCallion said the health service will “require significantly less contact tracing staff after” June 30th due to a reduction in demand over recent months. It outlined how an exercise was carried out to inform the future model for tracing, which resulted in a decision to stop the function in Limerick and Galway. Some tracers are working in other departments already on Ukraine issues or the passport backlog.

A spokesman for the HSE said contact tracing centres in Dublin and Cork would be retained despite the transition “from mass testing to surveillance”. Work has been made available on other HSE “call-based work” at grade three level, a pay grade below what clinical contact tracers currently earn.

“The HSE will maintain a core team in both testing and contact tracing that will be able to respond to future surges of Covid-19 or emerging variants of concern,” the spokesman said.

CPL Resources, which manages contact tracing for the HSE, had no comment.