Victoria has doubled its contact tracing capacity overnight with the purchase of a new Brother 8360p LazerFax.
A spokesperson for the Victorian government said the decision to make the purchase came after a $32 million review by consulting firm KPMG. “What this review revealed was that our contact tracing needed to improve. A second $48 million review confirmed that,” the spokesperson said.
“We haven’t scrimped on investing funds to get this right – these new faxes don’t even have the paper that curls up. It means we now have one of the most advanced contact tracing operations of the late 1990s”.
The new fax will allow twice as many cases to be processed, provided no-one is using the landline phone at the same time.
“It’s now a very streamlined operation,” the spokesperson said. “We receive a fax alerting us of a positive case, we unplug the fax, plug in the landline, call the patient’s GP to let them know, plug the fax back in, wait for a confirmation fax back from the GP, unplug the fax, plug back in the landline and then call the patient in question. It’s that simple. And then we repeat the process for the patient’s contacts. Imagine doing all of that with just one fax”.
