Contact Tracing with Shawn Pang

Hindsight is 2020 (#HI2020) is a ground up initiative founded and led by a class of 2020 graduate - Jessica Lee Yi Ling from Singapore Management University (SMU). In this series, she uncovers personal stories of resilience, courage and love amidst this crazy year we call 2020. Through the reflections and learnings shared in #HI2020, she hopes to empower internship and job seekers to improve their status quos and encourage aspiring entrepreneurs and volunteers to pursue their passions in 2021.

Contact Tracing with Shawn Pang

The Guardian of our cyberspace of the future - this is what our SMU School of Computing and Information Systems sophomore, Shawn Pang, strives to be. Passionate and possibly obsessed with Information Technology, he is always busy exploring new and upcoming tech. Some would see him as a computer guru. Well, that's true to an extent, but there is even more than meets the eye, including the fact that he actually was in the health surveillance taskforce combating the ongoing pandemic. In this interview with my ASMU mentee, let's find out a bit more about his journey.

Here’s 3 key things you will learn

1) A mind is like a parachute- it functions only when it is open

2) Stay on your toes and always move forward

3) Successful people know their "WHY"

How did you end up joining the contact tracing taskforce (also known as the health surveillance taskforce)?        

As a military regular, I have to report back to camp every summer holiday to fulfil my contract with them. However, the situation was different this year given the COVID pandemic. The focus for many returning military regulars was to curb the spread of COVID by helping out in contact tracing efforts. In a normal year, I would have been responsible for performing my regular cyber security duties.

When I joined the health surveillance taskforce, I was placed into a data management role as it was assumed that I can only do Excel since I'm from an IT-related course.

This perception changed after I started to perform the tasks given as I was able to display other skills including soft skills on top of my technical abilities.

What did your family and friends say/feel when they found out you needed to go and work as a contact tracer?      

They were surprised as they thought I was going back to do perform my normal duties; they did not expect my first vacation attachment to involve being a contact tracer. As they too were under the misconception of what a contact tracer role entailed, they were not as concerned, but they did worry about me mixing with other people at the contact tracing centers, and potentially having a higher risk of contracting the virus as it was during the peak period where COVID cases were at an all-time high during the "quarantine" period.

What were your initial expectations of the contact tracer role?

Based on the news, it seemed like a typical office job where the main task is calling people from 9 to 5. However, I soon realised that I was tasked do data management duties instead of being one of the contact tracing "callers".

The operation was face-paced and everyone was very serious. With a lack of manpower, I was placed in the HQ to perform data management operations. The HQ received COVID-19 lab results as soon as they were out. I then had to trawl the lab results, enrich, assign (to contact tracers) and account for every patient that has been tested positive for COVID-19 in Singapore. I had a day to learn my tasks and duties before I was deployed to perform them on my own.

The working hours were significantly long, because most of our data management duties involve prepping COVID cases for contact tracing before the contact tracers report to work at 9am and consolidating the cases at the end of the day once the contact tracers end their work at night. It could easily stretch from 8am to 2am. Working days were not just Mondays to Fridays, it included Saturday, Sunday and even public holidays.

As our superiors would always say, COVID never goes on a holiday.

How did you feel initially during the contact tracing exercise?   

It felt very monotonous because we are dealing with just data every day, this includes 100s and sometimes thousands of cases coming in per day. To us, it's just numbers and needing to process them was very exhausting because of the long working hours. Every day, the requirements change (the way we need to process the data because of new policies/cluster sites) so we were required to redo a lot of the work, rewrite our work processes and reformulate the way we process the data. It didn't feel rewarding as I couldn't see the results of my work immediately.

On top of contract tracing, did you have additional commitments?        

In addition to my work, I was involved in ASMU projects that revolved around raising funds for SMU Bursary Fund to help support financially challenged students to receive a holistic SMU education.

There were many industry certifications, competitions, opportunities offered during this period, but you knew you had to turn them down as you needed to prioritise the activities and spend your time and energy on the places that needed it the most.

What were some thoughts that often passed through your mind?          

1) I had to be very careful when dealing with these numbers (nervous and stressed) as any mistakes in the data processing could mean missing out on probable cases and clusters

2) I hoped that people would adhere to the rules back then and go out if only necessary (so that we can curb the spread and not have to do more work) (while my team and I are trying our best to manage the situation, others don't take it seriously and are reckless given the cabin fever they experienced/too much free time/boredom).

It needs the whole community to play its part as well, not just one team or one person.

Did it get better over time?       

Overtime, I started to see light and recognised that there was meaning to my work. When I was heading to work one day, I noticed a group of migrant workers back at work with road constructions. It was a rare sight, as most migrant workers were still quarantined or located in gazetted dormitories where they were isolated. They waved at me, smiled and exchanged greetings when I walked by them. I soon realised that I had recently "processed" a nearby dormitory, and that dormitory is now cleared to allow certain workers to go back to work.

That was when it struck me that my work may have created some form of impact in the lives of those workers who are now able to continue working.

What kept you going through this whole period?           

1) The colleagues I met and worked also started to develop the same drive and motivation to not just survive but thrive in this situation and contribute to Singapore's management of the pandemics. I am grateful for their company, especially Joel Cheong and Jeffrey Tan, good friends of mine who had shared this arduous journey with me.

I am very thankful to have Joel as my work partner, as we were able to share thoughts freely and understand each other, we were really ""in sync"", and that really helped with the efficiency of our work.

2) My family. My family was also very supportive. My mother always made sure that I arrived back home safely after work, even after coming home at 2-3am from camp.

3) You too! Thanks for being my ASMU mentor, for being there for me when I felt down, offering a listening ear and guiding me through my difficulties.

*I promise I did not pay or force him to say this hahaha.*

Thank you too for being a mentee that I can be so proud of! Well, evidently, this summer didn’t go the way you planned it. Looking back now, do you have any regrets?

No doubt, this was a crazy summer. It was certainly an arduous journey for not only just me, but for the frontline workers and everyone who is affected by the situation in one way or another.

Initially, I admit that I felt slightly disheartened when so many things were not going my way, but now that we have overcame the situation, I felt that it has paid off.

The whole situation has improved, and contact tracing became more manageable. Before I knew it, my attachment was coming to an end. I trained a handful of MOH staff that were to take over me. They are now running operations independently, using the tools and procedures we developed and given to them. I started off with processing patient 18000 in May, the last patient I handled was 48000 in July.

Could you share with us your learnings from this summer, especially those that you feel your family and friends can benefit from too?          

1) Keep an open mind.

Just like how reality turned out much different from what I expected from contact tracing. Not everything might go your way, and certain decisions might be made that you may know fully understand or fully agree with but avoid jumping to conclusions or making assumptions.

2) Be on your toes.

Avoid getting comfortable to the work you are performing, as the situation might change and new requirements gets introduced, similar to how the COVID situation kept evolving and all our work processes had to be changed on a daily basis.

3) Remember the purpose of what you are doing.

Perhaps it is to give back to someone or a community, perhaps it is to protect your family and friends. When you feel lost, always remember go back to why you started in the first place.