Magalong Wants Contact Tracing Revitalized

April 3, 2021 JUST IN

BAGUIO CITY(April 3, 2021) – Baguio City Mayor Benjamin Magalong, the country’s contact tracing czar, wants contact tracing revitalized as a Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) infection control measure, at the heels of the current surge of cases.
The mayor himself admitted that contact tracing efficiency ratio had declined and this needs to be addressed as soon as possible, while acknowledging how the country has low contact tracing efficiency ratio due to local government units concentration only on first generation contacts of patients who are mostly members of the households, inefficient encoding system and insufficient number of contact tracers.
He said contact tracing should go beyond the first generation contacts or F1 to effectively control the transmission, while encoding system must be enhanced for better recording and tracking.
As to the number of contract tracing personnel, he said the country only have 30 percent of the original 50,000 hired tracers and this had taken toll on work efficiency.
“In the past, for one case, we had four contact tracers available to do the job but now it has been reversed. One contact tracer has to work on four cases and pressed for time, he cannot finish all in one day resulting to backlogs until he becomes overwhelmed,” he said.
He said the Inter-Agency Task Force on Emerging Infectious Diseases resolved to again work on capacitating LGU contact tracing teams through massive trainings.
“We need to concentrate on this. There are constraints but these are challenges that we need to address,” he said.
Artemio A. Dumlao