By Mohamed Jaward Nyallay
The Emergency Operations Center (EOC) has defended the legitimacy of its contact tracing, amidst emerging concern that it could be faulty.
A spokesman for the center told Politico that they employed a scientific process in reaching every conclusion in contact tracing.
“Whatever we do, we are doing it scientifically. We have what we call genetic sequencing that also substantiates some of the claims the surveillance team is making (regarding transmission chain). A lot of sequencing is going on in addition to the physical forensic evidence that we have,” Harold Thomas, Communication Pillar Lead at EOC, told Politico on Saturday.
Thomas was speaking in response to a concern raised by the family of a COVID-19 (Case No.2) patient, contesting the accuracy of some of the new cases being linked to her chain of transmission.
Case No.2, a medical doctor, tested positive for the virus on the 1st of April. She works at the Ola During Hospital in Freetown. She also is a lecturer at the College of Medicine and Allied Health Sciences. She lectured a group of medical students at Ola During days before her diagnosis with the virus.
Case No. 2 didn’t have any history of travelling prior to her diagnosis, leaving authorities baffled as to where she could have contracted the virus from. She didn’t have any link to case No.1 either, who travelled to Sierra Leone from France on March 16th and tested positive on March 31st this year.
Case No.2’s primary contacts, who include her children, driver, domestic staff and her husband, all tested negative for the virus. Because of this, her family is reluctant to accept all the new cases being linked to her.
According to sources, she was part of a meeting at the Fourah Bay College on the 27th of March, which was also attended by cases No. 9 and 10, confirmed last week. They were also linked to her chain of transmission.
On Friday, Sierra Leone’s case tally rose drastically after 11 new cases were confirmed, the largest number of cases of the virus recorded in a day. It took the country’s tally to 26. Most of those who tested positive were said to be health workers, mainly nirses, who the EOC has again connected to case No. 2.
“It is highly likely that the nurses may have been infected in their communities or in the hospital. So linking the list of those now infected to my wife is a disservice not only to her but to the country,” case No. 2’s husband told Politico on Friday, adding: “My wife did the most decent and civilized thing by going for a test the moment she suspected she could have been infected, making her status public and warning all her contacts to isolate themselves.”
Thomas said they would just try to focus on what they are doing instead of defending their system, which he believes is doing just fine.
“For now we don’t want to contest or defend whatever people say. There will be time when we will reveal all of these things. For now we are in the middle of an outbreak,” he said.
On Saturday, the country recorded four more cases, taking its total to 30.
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