BY CHITO CHAVEZ
The Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) on Thursday appealed to Congress for allocation of P5 billion for the hiring of 50,000 contact tracers under Bayanihan to Recover as One bill.
Some P162 billion has been allocated under the Bayanihan to Recover as One bill.
DILG Secretary Eduardo Ano, in a letter to Senate President Vicente Sotto III and Senate Majority Leader Juan Miguel Zubiri, proposed the hiring and training of qualified and competent persons to serve as members of contact tracing teams starting September with a “corresponding budget requirement of P5 billion.”
He noted “contact tracing efforts are already being conducted by more than 7,000 contact tracing teams with a total of more than 85,000 contact tracers.”
Año stressed the need to hire at least 50,000 more to meet the WHO recommended ratio of one contact tracer for every 800 people.
“With a projected population of 108 million this year, we need 50,000 more contact tracers to attain the ideal number of 135,000 contact tracers to pursue quick and credible tracing of close contacts of confirmed COVID-19 patients,” said Año.
Año explained the current number of contact tracers cannot meet the recommendations of “Contact Tracing Czar Mayor Benjie Magalong of a 1:37 patient to close contacts ratio in order to cut the transmission of the disease.”
“We need to significantly increase the number of contact tracers to meet the 1:37 ratio target recommended by Mayor Magalong which has been effective in Baguio and in Cebu City,” he added.
The DILG chief insisted that “time is the essence as the government has “to act with dispatch given the rising number of COVID-19 cases in the country.”
“We are racing against time. Every single second counts and the longer we fail to expand our contact tracing capacity, the higher the probability that the virus spreads to more communities. We, therefore, need more contact tracers urgently to break the chain of transmission of this virus,” he noted. (Chito Chavez)