WA's Health Minister has admitted some organisations, including schools, are now being asked to handle their own contact tracing, as case numbers continue to surge.
This week has seen a significant increase in local COVID cases, jumping from 258 on Tuesday to 643 on Wednesday, and more than 1000 cases on Friday.
After being questioned by the opposition in Parliament on Thursday, Health Minister Amber-Jade Sanderson said it was to be expected with the state's current caseload.
The opposition has criticised the move, but some teachers have welcomed the shift, saying it will improve the speed of communication.
As of Thursday afternoon, 147 schools were actively dealing with positive cases, with a 175 affected since the start of term.
Contact tracers under increasing strain
Ms Sanderson told Parliament decisions had to be made about where to focus contact tracers' efforts.
She said while the contact tracing workforce was being boosted with staff from across the public sector, it was still a finite resource.
"Once you get to over 500 cases a day, between 500 and 1000, it starts to get very, very hard to contact trace, test and isolate all those cases," she said.
"And so, essentially, public health contact tracers focus on high-risk sites like aged-care settings, like hospitals, like police, like essential services.
"That's what the publicly-paid contact tracers will do, and those organisations like BHP, like Rio, like schools, will be able to contact their own workers and their own contacts to identify them as contacts."
Ms Sanderson said the move should not come as a shock or surprise, but was a "standard way of operating" in significant outbreaks like the one facing WA.
"And that is exactly what it should be doing."
Education Minister Sue Ellery said it made sense for schools to manage part of the process.
"Schools hold attendance and class list information and, rather than providing this information to WA Health and then awaiting their advice about close contacts, schools will use the step-by-step guide provided by WA Health to identify the infectious period and any close contacts in the school," she said.
"Schools will then inform students and staff of their obligations as close contacts using the template letters they are provided with."
Health no longer contacting school contacts
The shift appears to have happened earlier this week, with Carey Baptist College writing to parents of its Harrisdale high school community on Wednesday.
Secondary principal Brenden Gifford explained that while the Health Department would still specify infectious periods and dates when close contacts could return to class, the school would identify who those close contacts were.
He said where a student returns a positive rapid antigen test, "the Department of Health is requiring [it] is confirmed by a positive PCR".
The school would then make decisions about who would be deemed a close contact and who should isolate.
"This represents a significant responsibility for the College to manage," Mr Gifford wrote.
He said it was important steps be taken to "minimise opportunities for students to be identified as close contacts", because of the impact it could have on parents who may then have to quarantine.
In a message to parents on Thursday, Newman College principal John Finneran said families would be asked to help with the contact tracing process at that school.
"Based on information provided by the parent, the college will identify close contacts within the school and advise these students to get a PCR test, isolate and await further instructions from WA Health," he said.
Principals' association backs change
Earlier this week, school principals had raised concerns about the delays they were seeing between people testing positive, and being able to communicate that information.
Armando Giglia, from the WA Secondary School Executives Association, said the shift to greater involve schools in managing positive cases should help alleviate those concerns.
He said schools were already having to make decisions about which students and staff met close contact definitions.
"The schools are just being able to react quicker to what they would have been doing, instead of having to wait until Health had been through the contact tracing that they do" he said.
"They can actually make some choices at the school and send out the communication much earlier."
Mr Giglia said the responsibility of contact tracing positive cases outside of schools still fell to the Health Department.
The government has committed $5 million to small and medium-sized schools with "modest administrative teams, to support them in administrative tasks associated with COVID-19 cases in schools," Ms Ellery said.
"WA Health will continue to provide support to all schools should they need it, and play a lead role in schools with a large number of vulnerable students."
Opposition critical of shift in responsibility
The opposition's education spokesperson Peter Rundle said it was unfair to leave the responsibility with schools, which already had a lot to deal with.
"They're already dealing with isolating classes, online learning arrangements, finding relief teachers, cancellation of school camps and many other things," he said.
"I don't think it's the role of our already overstretched principals and the like to actually have to then start conveying COVID tracing information to families."
He said it indicated the state's health systems were already starting to struggle.
"We've had two years to prepare the health system and have everything in readiness, so after a few weeks for this to happen is really surprising to me."
Mr Rundle said it would also be another responsibility for businesses already stretched by other factors, including checking vaccine mandates, to take on.
