The ‘Unsung Heroes’ of the COVID-19 Pandemic Response
These are the people who are helping us #flattenthecurve every single day.
“Keep staying home. Keep protecting our health system. Keep saving lives.” — Daniel Andrews, Member of Parliament for Victoria
As we sit here in our homes, surrounded by housemates, family, or maybe even just by ourselves, we have the luxury to reflect on what is happening in the world outside our little bubbles. Every day we see the news, we hear about the incredible life-saving work our frontline health workers are doing. And what they are doing is truly remarkable. But there are so many more people and professions that are contributing to us overcoming this confronting pandemic.
In one of his media releases, Australian Chief Medical Officer, Professor Brendan Murphy, recognised some of our “unsung heroes” in the COVID-19 pandemic who are working around the clock, and behind the scenes, to keep our community supported.
I’d like the opportunity for a few minutes to walk you through a broader public health picture of what is happening during our pandemic response, and to talk about three crucial groups of unsung heroes: contact tracers, research and ethics departments and members of the general public.
Contact Tracers
“Contact tracing [is one of] our most important measures to reduce the spread of the virus.” — Scott Morrison, Prime Minister of Australia.
What is the purpose of Contact Tracing?
Contact tracing is necessary to prevent the further spread of diseases. More specifically, healthy individuals in close contact with someone with COVID-19 are susceptible to developing the disease themselves. In some ways, contact tracers are the foundation to our healthcare support services.
How does Contact Tracing work?
When an individual is confirmed to be infected with COVID-19, their general practitioner or treating doctor will ask if they have been in close contact with other individuals recently. Depending on the country and local policies, the individual may also be interviewed by public health officials to ascertain this information. A list of individuals in contact is then collated, and these people are urgently contacted to check whether they may have any symptoms of the disease. The contact traces monitor and advise individuals if they need to quarantine themselves for the 14-day safety period to keep themselves and people around them safe.
If one or more of the individuals in contact with the confirmed case is also confirmed to be infected, the same contact tracing process happens until every traceable exposed individual has been accounted for and advised on the recovery and isolation process.
So, as you may now realise, it’s literally a non-stop job!
Why do Trace-callers play an invaluable role in addressing COVID-19?
Trace-callers play a vital role in preventing the further spread of disease. Without them, we could easily go from a handful of cases to uncontrolled communities spread within days! This is why it is important for trace-calling to be implemented as early as possible when a highly contagious disease, like COVID-19, presents itself. In the United States, this was done initially, but unfortunately could not be maintained because of the drastic increase in cases. In Australia, we are fortunate enough that lockdown stages were implemented early on, and tireless trace-calling has been effective in curbing community spread thus far.
And until the day this pandemic is over and infection rates noticeably decline, trace-callers will continue to play one of the most important roles in preventing the spread of disease.
Research and Ethics Departments
Who are they?
We have heard many times in recent weeks that a vaccine is ‘on the way’, but before any clinical trial can start on the race to find a safe COVID19 vaccine, researchers need to submit their projects to an approved Human Research and Ethics Committee (HREC). These are coordinated committees of administration and ethics staff, doctors, lawyers and lay members of the public who determine if a clinical study is ethical and necessary to conduct.
What are they doing?
The role of a HREC is to ensure that research(ers) is/are compliant with legal and ethical obligations to the public and participants involved. Additionally, these committees have an important role in gaining both clinician and non-medical public views when making their decisions.
Without understanding the importance of their job, most people would think during these unprecedented times, we should just test any and everything — but it’s not that simple. If we didn’t have the HREC in place, we would risk speeding up the race for a vaccine at the cost of ensuring the quality and safety of these potential interventions.
How has COVID-19 impacted research and ethics teams?
Due to the immediate nature of the COVID-19 pandemic, submission and review processes have been majorly expedited. To give you a better understanding of just how fast these processes have been sped up, some vaccines have been able to get into clinical trials in the span of around 63 days, compared to a normal vaccine development timeline of 10 to 15 years. Additionally, it is necessary for more HREC meetings to be held — we want to speed up the process to chasing down a vaccine, but we need to be mindful of our ethical obligations as well.
In my own experience working briefly with one of the HRECs in Victoria, the role of processing and reviewing research applications is a beyond onerous task. It involves a high level of teamwork between members of the ethics team to say the least. Every single day the research and ethics teams are liaising with multiple researchers and sponsors in an urgent manner. Behind the scenes, these teams process an incredible number of research projects, and the presence of COVID-19 only means an increase in their already-heavy workload.
The Public: Our Community Role
“Because of [the public’s] actions the last few weeks — we’ve started to see positive signs that our efforts are working.” — Daniel Andrews, Member of Parliament for Victoria.
Who are they?
The police workers who are patrolling the streets, the farmers who are doing it tough, the supermarket workers who are stacking the forever empty shelves and the everyday people who are doing their part by staying home.
What are they doing?
Our essential public workers are putting their own health at risk by going to work everyday to provide for the safety and needs of the community. Those who are able to work from home or otherwise have given up their daily routines to stay at home.
What impact has COVID-19 had on our livelihood?
The COVID-19 pandemic has had a major impact on everyone’s day-to-day lives, not only in Australia, but across the world. Working from home, teaching children from home, no longer going to the gym, missing sporting games — the list goes on…
But despite the additional stress on our livelihood, we have been doing an exceptional job in preventing the further spread of disease, and come together now as a community more than ever.
What are we doing to help?
Currently, we are doing three key things to control the spread of COVID-19:
- Practicing social distancing: this means maintaining a distance of 1.5 metres from other individuals, especially in a public setting.
- Isolating people who have contracted the virus or have been overseas: Self-isolation is important in cases where individuals have recently travelled overseas. This is important to prevent the further spread of disease to non-infected individuals, and to ensure that those who have been overseas keep out of public spaces as it can take up to 14 days for symptoms to show.
- Good Hand Hygiene Practices: Thoroughly washing our hands with hot water and soap for 20 seconds reduces the likelihood of contracting disease (by touching our mouth or face) and/or infecting others by touching them or public use items (such as in supermarkets, gyms, households).
What more can we do?
In Australia, we need to continue to abide by our state and federal instructions from our government and public health officials. Additionally we need to reduce our contact with people outside our immediate family, and stay at home unless absolutely necessary (such as for work, food and/or urgent medical attention). By doing so, we are doing a great service to our frontline healthcare professionals and public health workers working around the clock… and to our friends and family who may be more susceptible to the disease.
Moving Forward Into Uncertain Times
We have all had to face drastic changes to our lives in the last few months. Trace callers, research and ethics teams, and the general public are some of the ‘unsung heroes’ of the COVID-19 pandemic — although not seen on the frontlines, these groups ultimately provide a foundation for our clinicians to provide the best possible level of healthcare.
We must continue to recognise the role of these workers in the current pandemic, but also take time to appreciate the importance of our own individual roles in reducing the burden on our healthcare system. As individuals, we all have the responsibility to adhere to the restrictions and advice provided by the government and our public health officials.
Whilst there is no doubt the restrictions in place are taxing, we need to remain diligent and continue to play our role in the fight against this pandemic — to be our own ‘unsung heroes’.
“We are in a good place, but we have to maintain that good place.” — CMO Brendan Murphy.
Bianka D’souza,
Halad to Health Winter 2019 Alumni
Bianka is currently a second-year Master of Public Health student at Monash University. When she isn’t weightlifting, she spends her time volunteering and working in public healthcare.
