The tracking team of the Lanzarote Health Services Management detected during the month of January the origin of 84.6% of the COVID-19 infections that have occurred on the island. "It is one of the best traceability data achieved and occurs in the worst month of the pandemic and in which the highest number of cases have been recorded," the Ministry of Health highlights.
According to the Report of epidemiological indicators of COVID-19 in the Canary Islands, Lanzarote is the island where the highest number of cases is associated with an outbreak, followed by Gran Canaria with 74.4% and Fuerteventura with 73.7%. "Far from being an exception, the data from all the islands place Canary Islands as the Autonomous Community with the highest traceability in the country," the Ministry specifies, which recalls that a high percentage of this indicator implies that the tracking teams "identify the transmission chains and the pandemic can be better controlled".
A total of 36 people currently make up the tracking team of the Lanzarote Health Services Management: 18 nurses, 9 physiotherapists and 9 military personnel from the Air Force who have been trained to carry out monitoring work during the pandemic caused by the coronavirus.
The number of team members has been changing depending on the epidemiological moment and the number of cases caused by each wave of the coronavirus. In January, and given the worsening of the data on the Island, the Lanzarote Health Area received the offer of collaboration from the Health Promotion area of Tenerife, the tracking team of Fuerteventura and military trackers of the Single Command of the Canary Islands.
Led by Baltasar Gómez, this team focuses its efforts on encircling the virus and preventing the transmission chain from expanding. Every day, and after being informed by the medical team of the new cases, the trackers begin the phone calls to each of them and to all the close contacts they provide.
During the month of January, 115 cases were tracked in a single day and more than 1,200 telephone calls were made, while the daily average was 62 cases and around 600 calls each day.
They have tracked 421 outbreaks on the island since the beginning of the pandemic
The work of the trackers consists of collecting the greatest number of possible data to make a record of identification and health information that allows them to monitor the cases. They also investigate issues such as how many people they have been with and under what conditions in order to identify close contacts. The information collected by the trackers is sent to the General Directorate of Public Health every day.
The other task of the trackers is educational, since with each person they make a call to social responsibility and remember the importance of following health measures such as the correct use of masks, good hand hygiene and maintaining a safe distance.
In the case of being a close contact and even if the PCR is negative, the team insists that isolation be maintained and complied with, and they recognize that it is at this point where they find the most resistance from citizens, so the calls are repeated.
In this way, and since the pandemic began, 421 outbreaks have been tracked in Lanzarote. According to this team, most of the outbreaks occur in the family environment, both between cohabitants and non-cohabitants. The workplace is the second where the most outbreaks have been detected, followed by social and school outbreaks. However, the Ministry specifies that "those of a mixed nature are becoming more common, that is, they occur in more than one area"