Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, May 19) – The government will need billions of pesos to hire up to 136,000 contact tracers for probable COVID-19 patients, the Department of Health said Tuesday.
Estimates made by Health Secretary Francisco Duque III estimated the cost at ₱11.7 billion, assuming that authorities will agree to fill all these slots to allot a contact tracer for every 800 people.
“Assuming we pay them each ₱30,000 a month, if we keep them to do contact tracing for at least three months, all told, the budget required for that is about ₱11.7 billion,” Duque told senators during a five-hour inquiry into the progress of COVID-19 response in the country.
Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III earlier proposed to hire laborers displaced by the two-month lockdown as contact tracers to help the government’s response and provide temporary work and wages.
Duque, however, noted that there are certain skills for communication as well as technology literacy to fulfill the job, which entails getting in touch with family, friends, and other people who had close contact with a confirmed COVID-19 patient.
The StaySafe app is also being tapped to digitize the tracing database.
Senator Sonny Angara, who has survived COVID-19, said tracing should be “real-time” or may otherwise be rendered useless. Based on his experience, contact tracers only got in touch with him on April 24 – a month since he tested positive and already two weeks after he was discharged from the hospital.
Sen. Panfilo “Ping” Lacson also pointed out why there are more people tested than the tally of people traced to have interacted with coronavirus patients. Duque explained that tracing is only triggered once a person is confirmed to have the virus.
Acting Secretary Karl Kendrick Chua of the National Economic and Development Authority added his agency is also ready to present a proposal to convert a cash-for-work program currently meant to cover up to 1 million workers to cover the manpower needed for contact tracing.
Chua added that the number of contact tracers to be hired will “depend on the amount we are willing to pay.”
The Department of Health said it has hired 38,315 contact tracers as of May 14, but will need an additional 126,000 workers.
Economic managers have earlier voiced concern that public funds are running low as COVID-19 expenses pile up. Dominguez said state revenues amounted to ₱706.85 billion from January-April, down 21 percent compared to ₱900.33 billion collected during the same period in 2019.
The biggest difference was the postponed tax payment deadline, Dominguez added, which the government expects to collect later on as lockdown rules are lifted.
Separately, NEDA proposed that the conduct of the 2020 census of population to be delayed to September for safety reasons, four months later than schedule.
