A family who spent time with a positive COVID-19 case in South Australia last week is furious they were not contacted by health authorities sooner.
The friend visited the Port Augusta family last Monday, after arriving in South Australia from Melbourne the previous day.
The man then returned to Adelaide, and two days later was told by SA Health they had been seated next to a COVID-positive person on their flight into South Australia.
"Our friend actually notified us — it didn't come through SA Health, it just came through him," Port Augusta woman Regina McKenzie said.
"So we went and got tested, everybody did, the whole family... and our first test came back negative."
Four days later, on Sunday, the friend's third test came back positive to COVID-19, after two previous negative results.
He texted the family and they went straight back into quarantine.
But Ms McKenzie's family heard nothing from authorities until around midnight on Monday night, when they finally received a call from SA Health confirming they needed to be isolating.
None of Ms McKenzie's family members have so far tested positive.
SA Health defends contact tracing timeframe
Ms McKenzie said she was worried there could be others the man spent time with after his arrival in South Australia who had not been contacted by SA Health.
"How many other people came in contact with him? That's the scary part. He did give [authorities] all details of everybody he came in contact with," Ms McKenzie said.
She said the call from SA Health only came after her daughter reached out to her contacts at the local health service to follow the matter up.
In a statement, SA Health did not comment on the particular case but said the contact tracing process could take time.
"It involves a range of activities including conducting a full case interview, contact tracing including using QR codes from known venues, and a detailed risk assessment to determine the level of risk, which takes into consideration a number of physical factors as well as how infectious the person was," an SA Health spokesperson said.
"Based on the information provided during case interviews, we work to directly communicate with all individuals who have been in contact with a positive COVID-19 case,."
The agency said if it could not get in touch with contacts, and if a risk assessment showed it was necessary, exposure locations would be published.
