The Saskatchewan Health Authority is putting out information they say will help people determine if a call about contact tracing or test results is actually from health officials.
They say sometimes a number may appear as out of province or country, and this is because the SHA sometimes uses a Hosted Call Centre.
A real SHA agent will most times provide the recipient with the first three digits of their Saskatchewan Health Card number, after which the recipient will then be asked to give the last three digits of their health card. They’ll also confirm other details like date of birth, first and last name.
In some cases, they note, when someone is called by the SHA to tell them that they’ve been exposed to a positive case, the SHA may only have their first name or phone number.
In any context that someone is concerned about a potentially fraudulent call or someone posing as the SHA, or would prefer not to answer from an unknown number, they can hang up, take note of the number and call the SHA again to verify.
They will then be connected with an SHA representative or a recording indicating that it is them and that another representative will try and call back from the same number.