BY GENALYN KABILING
Policemen will not be part of the government teams that will visit houses to detect and isolate people with symptoms of the new coronavirus disease, Malacañang clarified Wednesday.
Presidential spokesman Harry Roque assured the public that the house-to-house search in areas with high coronavirus cases will be led by health professionals, including representatives from Department of Health and the concerned local government unit.
“The police will not have any business going on a house-to-house,” Roque said over CNN Philippines Wednesday.
“It’s really health professionals, it’s the DoH (Department of Health), it’s the municipal health officers, it’s community nurses, it’s barangay health workers. They will just be going to house to house looking for symptomatics,” he said.
According to Roque, the house-to-house check, adopted by the government from Mumbai, India, has so far been proven “hugely successful” during the pilot testing in the past two weeks.
The Coordinated Operations to Defeat Epidemic (CODE) initiated by DoH involves active case finding through house-to-house symptom checks, reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) testing for symptomatic persons, and quarantine and isolation for those infected.
“It’s proven successful. It’s manageable. We may not be able to do it in all barangays simultaneously but we certainly will start in areas with highest clusters of COVID-19,” Roque said.
“I don’t think the public should worry. This is purely a health initiative,” he said.
The active case surveillance and finding will be strictly implemented especially in places under localized lockdown, according to Roque. (Genalyn Kabiling)
