Victoria's Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton says authorities will consider more carefully the possible need to access mobile phone data to verify information from contact tracing interviews, in light of the Shepparton outbreak.
The spotlight has been thrown back onto Victoria's contact tracing process this week,
But on September 30, as one quarantined staff member awaited their test results, one of their household contacts left home and went to regional Victoria for permitted work, stopping at Kilmore for breakfast and infecting a cafe worker.That Melbourne traveller, who would later test positive, told authorities they also went to Benalla, but didn't tell contact tracers they stopped in the regional city of Shepparton too.
"I can share information with relevant agencies for the purpose of determining public health risk," he said.When asked if contact tracers should consider requesting phone location data if they have a suspicion a person is not being forthright, Professor Sutton replied: "Yeah, I think so." "If we've got that suspicion that information is being hidden and there's another mechanism to validate that, I'll absolutely use those powers," he said.
"I recognise that there are issues that sometimes relate to a person wilfully hiding stuff and others who are genuinely fearful of consequences with respect of visa status — a lot of people have fears about what it might mean for their work," he said. "And no matter what you tell us about your movements you're not going to get into trouble, we just need to know because that's the most important thing.
"It is an attempt to try and have perhaps some tighter settings in those that are most proximate to an outbreak that then allows the broader community to open up faster," Mr Andrews said.
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