Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, June 11) – The government is looking to hire 50,000 additional contact tracers by July to aid its COVID-19 response, Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque said Thursday.
Roque said the Department of the Interior and Local Government will be rounding up thousands of new contact tracers who will trace suspected and probable coronavirus patients who may have been infected through interaction with a carrier of the virus.
The disease is spread through small droplets from the nose or mouth when people infected with the virus cough or sneeze.
The Department of Health earlier said that it will need about ₱11.7 billion if it will maximize the 136,000 contact tracers it needs to do more thorough checks on people who had contact with a confirmed patient. This assumes that a contact tracer will be paid ₱30,000 a month for at least three months of service.
The standard is to assign one contact tracer per 800 people. The StaySafe app is also being tapped to digitalize the tracing database.
Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III said in May that workers displaced by lockdown protocols may be hired as contact tracers, but Health Secretary Francisco Duque III said specific communication and technology literacy skills are needed to be effective in contact tracing.
The Philippine Statistics Authority reported that 7.3 million Filipinos were jobless in April, largely due to the strict stay-at-home rules that forced most businesses to stop operations.
As of May 27, the DOH had 38,000 contact tracers and is looking to hire 126,000 more. Also considered for the job are barangay workers and social workers.
Senator Sonny Angara, who has survived COVID-19, previously 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.
There are more than 23,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases in the country and over 1,000 deaths.
