By Daniel Manalastas
Contact Tracing Czar and Baguio City Mayor Benjamin Magalong admitted Tuesday that the contact tracing system in the Philippines has deteriorated over the past few weeks.
Mayor Magalong confirmed this during the hearing of the House Committee on Health amid the rising COVID-19 cases in the Philippines.
“For the past four weeks, nakita niyo na talagang nag-deteriorate ng malaki (you have seen that it has really greatly deteriorated) and look at the average, from 1:7 it went down to 1:3,” Magalong pointed out.
Magalong explained that the lower the ratio, the lesser efficiency in contact tracing efforts.
“Ang nako-cocontact trace lang ho d’yan, are members of the household… Technically, wala pong contact tracing diyan because ang gagawin lang po ng isang contact tracer, i-aannounce lang ‘yung positive patient, hanapin niya ‘yung members ng household and have them quarantined. Ganoon na lang po (What is only being contact-traced are members of the household… Technically, that is not contact tracing since what the contract tracer will merely do is to announce the positive patient, find the members of his/her household and have them quarantined. That just it),” Magalong explained.
Citing the possible reasons for this, Magalong presumed that many local government units are not using the data collection tool which has been shared with them. This could have helped in the government’s effort on contact tracing.
“I wonder why kung bakit hindi pa rin nila ginagamit (they are not yet using it). Probably because of encoding issues,” Magalong surmised.
He added that despite the fact that they conducted a series of training all over the country, local government units who are recipients “failed to cascade the (previous) training to their municipalities.”
As solution to the contact tracing efforts of the government, the contact tracing czar disclosed that in the next few weeks, LGUs in need of improving their contact tracing system will be mentored like the National Capital Region. Around 600 personnel will be trained anytime this week.
