On order

250 people were needed at the Contact Tracing Centre which was running two shifts per day / 7 days a week. These people had to be registered/ previously registered nurses or have a medical background and be able to handle difficult calls with people who would not know they had been in close contact with someone who had tested positive for the virus.

When virus cases increased, the selection criteria changed; registered nurses were relocated to front-line positions, people were stood down if they shared a home with a front-line worker and additional, criteria regarding suitability to work in NCCS was added to the recruitment process. Numbers changed each day.

1000 people ‘possibly’ were concurrently required to form a remote national workforce to carry out contact tracing if the virus escalated through community transmission.