Corona: – Under pressure: – New thinking is necessary

In Oslo, health advisor Robert Stein reported long waiting lists and a machine running at full speed. Hundreds are infected in the capital every day, testing and tracing under pressure.

Since the goal is no longer to reduce infections, but to reduce them, Steyn believes it is time to change the TISK strategy, which has been Norway’s key to success so far – namely testing, isolation, tracing and quarantine.

“I’m calling for a new kind of thinking from national health authorities regarding labor tracing and testing,” Steen told Dagbladet.

There is a limit to how much we can swallow with the old rules.

– It doesn’t look like that

Steyn believes that residents must now take on a greater share of the responsibility for testing and tracing.

– I think that perhaps the test should become to a greater extent an individual responsibility, and not involve the municipality as much as it is today. Same thing I think we can think of infection tracing. If you’ve tested yourself at home and found out you’re infected, we can encourage people to call your close friends themselves and ask them to get tested, rather than it being a case of the infection tracing team.

Steyn believes this will simplify the work of infection detection, when the goal is control and reduction.

– I think the TISK strategy was founded when we had a different system and a different perception of reality. We decided that the infection had to stop, and so we closed the community. Now we have a new situation, where the indications are that we should have a more open society. We must limit infection, but not put it aside. Then TISK doesn’t work as well as it did, and I’m inclined to think it’s better to change TISK’s strategy than to shut down the community again.

TISK is highly charged

Allows for more home tests

FHI’s chief medical officer, Preben, told Aavitsland Dagbladet that he envisions greater use of home tests.

An important part of the solution is to replace quarantine with screening, preferably self-testing, so that we only take out the infected. Gradually, we envision a much greater use of self-testing among people who show symptoms: people buy a kiwi test and check if they notice symptoms. Maybe we should hand out free home tests to people so that everyone can have some tests at home.

Consider changes

Section Head Line Vold is also open to tuning TISK.

– Obviously, it takes a lot of municipalities when there are so many infected and many of them are in close contact. We’re looking at whether infection tracing could be made more targeted or risk-based, she says.

Do you have any examples of changes in methods?

– So far, no changes have been made, but we know that it requires extensive resources to contact everyone the municipalities will contact in the current form.

When there is an outbreak and a situation with a lot of stress, it may be appropriate, for example, for the municipality to contact only those most at risk of infection, perhaps setting some priorities, while finding other ways to notify potential others. Fuld says.

– That’s something we know many municipalities are thinking about now, and then we have to see if we should also make some moves at the national level.

We do not intend to continue using TISK forever. It’s a methodology that we’re using now for control, and then we have to make changes there as infection status and vaccination coverage change.