Gov’t needs 82K more contact tracers

The government needs 82,537 more contract tracers nationwide in its continuing effort to contain the spread of the new coronavirus disease (COVID-19), Interior Secretary Eduardo Año said on Thursday.

“Given that there is still no vaccine or cure for COVID-19, the government needs to train and hire contact tracers who will break the … transmission of [the disease] by identifying those who may have been exposed to the virus and monitoring them daily for 14 days,” Año said.

So far, 87,092 of 94,534 persons who have had contact with COVID-19 carriers have been traced by local contact-tracing teams (CTTs), according to Interior Undersecretary Bernardo Florece Jr.

At the same time, Año clarified that while the government needs to hire over 80,000 contact tracers, the proposal to the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF) was to hire “only 50,000 since the [local government units, or LGUs] continue to increase the number of their contact tracers. There are also volunteers from the private sector.”

Año said there were currently 52,463 contact tracers who were part of 3,347 local CTTs nationwide.

According to the World Health Organization, “the ideal contact tracer to population ratio is 1:800, so to fully cover 108 million Filipinos, we actually need a total of 135,000 contact tracers,” Año said.

“We are waiting for the approval of the IATF so that our LGUs can start hiring and training contact tracers in their localities. We need to be one step ahead and ready with the required number of contact tracers rather than be caught off guard in case of a second wave,” he added.