A TOTAL of 238,000 contact tracers have been deployed nationwide to track and manage the close contacts of individuals who tested positive for Sars-CoV-2, the virus that causes coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19), Department of the Interior and Local Government Secretary Eduardo Año said on Wednesday, September 9, 2020.
He said most of them are volunteers from the Philippine National Police, Bureau of Fire Protection and Armed Forces of the Philippines.
He said the DILG will be hiring 50,000 more contact tracers, 20,000 of whom will be assigned in Luzon and 15,000 each in Visayas and Mindanao.
"While they will be hired on a per-province basis, they will be deployed within their region because most of the time, a big percentage of Covid-19 cases are from the barangays or cities. This is to reinforce the present number of contact tracers," Año said in a television interview.
He earlier thanked the Congress for appropriating P5 billion for contact tracing efforts under the proposed Bayanihan to Recover as One Act (Bayanihan 2).
"The additional funds will allow the government to undertake aggressive contact tracing and active case surveillance and case finding which is a pillar of the National Action Plan against the pandemic," he said.
He said the hiring of more contact tracers will allow the government to meet the recommendation of contact tracing czar and Baguio City Mayor Benjie Magalong to aim for a 1:37 patient to close contact ratio in order to cut the transmission of the disease.
Año said the hiring will begin once the Department of Budget Management (DBM) releases the funds.
Malacañang has yet to announce whether President Rodrigo Duterte has signed the Bayanihan 2 law. (VoxPop Philippines)