Baguio sustaining contact tracing system

The city is sustaining its contact tracing system amid resource and manpower struggles and the spiraling number of Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) cases.

Mayor Benjamin Magalong said contact tracing remains a vital strategy in the city’s COVID-19 fight based on the city’s experiences in dealing with the case spikes and thus cannot just be discarded.

He said the city was able to retain its contact tracing workforce by enlisting anew the services of trained uniformed personnel and other volunteers averting depletion after the national government’s non-renewal of contracts of personnel hired by the Dept. of Interior and Local Government.

By recalling the 60 trained personnel from the Baguio City Police Philippine National Police to augment the 58 hired by the city government, the city was able to maintain a 118 contact tracing manpower.

Despite the augmentation however, the teams still cannot cope with the number of contacts after cases rapidly increased after the holidays.

The mayor said that to cope with the high volume of cases, they decided to streamline the tracing process by prioritizing the information being gathered to the first generation contacts of the patients at home, workplaces and gatherings attended.

This is to conserve the time the tracers spend on the patients to enable them to cover as many patients as possible.

It will just be for the meantime that the city is facing a surge otherwise the city will retain the process to maintain its contact tracing efficiency, the mayor said.

He said contact tracing should go beyond the first generation contacts or F1 to effectively control the transmission and encoding system must be enhanced for better recording and tracking.

“Contact tracing is still a critical pillar of COVID management.  We cannot discount its importance in preventing the spread of the virus.  We cannot just do away with it,” he said. – Aileen P. Refuerzo