Editorial

No contact tracing team

 The Department of Health warned in a recent report against fake contact tracers and disclosed that the agency currently does not have its own team for contact tracing, an important preventive step against the COVID-19.

Based on a statement issued by DOH on August 10, it was said that they received reports about a new scheme where in some people received calls from supposed members of the health agency’s contact tracing team to extract personal information and exploit money from them.

We believe it is a good move to advise the public earlier against entertaining these calls. It is a must that the public is reminded that the agency does not have a contact tracing team. We should not let these people to take advantage of the pandemic. 

While the advisory fairly rceived positive reception on Facebook, most of us noticed of the DOH’s admittance that it does not have its own contact tracing team. Some even expressed confusion on the purpose of contact tracers assigned by local government units. In fact, others recalled that the DOH previously announced a budget dedicated to hiring thousands of contact tracers last May.

The World Health Organization (WHO) explained earlier that aside from mass testing, contact tracing is also an effective public health tool because it can break transmissions of the highly contagious disease, thus control outbreaks 

The WHO stressed that when it is systematically applied, contact tracing will break the chains of transmission of infectious disease and is thus an essential public health tool for controlling infectious disease outbreaks.

For the record, since March, the DOH and other related government agencies tasked to handle the country’s pandemic response had been making promises of assigning personnel dedicated to tracing people who have been in close contact with suspected and infected patients. The health agency even posted a publication material that announced the call for volunteers to conduct contact tracing activities.

Moreover, the DILG has since hired around 73,000 contact tracers. It only used to have 52,463 contact tracers in June and planned on increasing it to over 82,000.

It was also reported that the DOH announced that it needs 94,000 contact tracers, which corresponded to at least one contact tracer per 800 people. It allotted a hefty P11.7 billion funding to hire 136,000 contact tracers, an amount questioned in the Senate

Several people also questioned the DOH last June over its postings asking COVID-19 survivors of their statuses and details. They asked if this is how health authorities conduct contact tracing.