Metro Manila, Laguna and Cebu City will be placed under “modified” enhanced community quarantine from May 16 until May 31.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, May 12) — The government should consider employing as COVID-19 contact tracers those who temporarily lost their jobs due to the lockdown, Finance Secretary Carlos “Sonny” Dominguez III said Tuesday.
“We should hire contact tracers en masse to boost our efforts to stop transmission and defeat COVID-19 while providing jobs,” Dominguez told the latest Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases’ meeting aired on Tuesday.
He noted that around 1.2 to 1.5 million workers are temporarily out of work, and they can be tapped to do contact tracing faster.
“Sometimes, it takes one contact tracer one whole day to do contact tracing for one case, so we need to hire more contact tracers to match the numbers we expect that will come with more testing,” Dominguez said.
The official also suggested to “restart and accelerate” the Build, Build, Build program once viral disease is under control, in accordance with health standards.
He stressed that the “infrastructure remains to be the best driver of economic growth because it has the best multiplier effects in terms of employment.”
Forty-three of the 100 flagship Build, Build, Build projects are supposed to be completed by 2022, generating one million jobs a year.
The lockdown, however, brought public works to a halt, so project timetables will be pushed back.
In the same meeting, COVID-19 Response Chief Implementer Carlito Galvez proposed a general concept for transition from enhanced community quarantine to a more relaxed lockdown.
“To contain the virus, we have to focus our intervention on the carriers,” he said.
He said they intend to continue focusing on treating infected individuals, testing suspected carriers and treating people with COVID-19.
A Senate hearing held in February revealed gaps in the government’s efforts to track down potentially infected individuals, prompting the Department of Health (DOH) to revise its protocol and tap the police to help.
A month later, the DOH appealed for contact tracing volunteers.
The DOH said that among the tasks of a COVID-19 contact tracer are profiling, data encoding, and assisting callers with inquiries.
