By Mar T. Supnad
VIGAN CITY, Ilocos Sur – The local government unit has put in place a system seen helpful in contact tracing among local folks.
Citing the passage of Ordinance No. 41, series of 2020, Mayor Juan Carlo Medina announced that all tricycle-for-hire operating in the city will have to maintain a logbook of its passengers if only to ensure that they would be able to track down people in case a passenger gets infected with COVID-19.
Vigan City has recorded a total of 15 cases, all of whom are already tagged as recovered and all close contacts that have been swabbed also tested negative, according to City Health Officer Dr. Loida Ranches on Tuesday, August 11.
However, with the transition of general community quarantine to modified enhanced community quarantine (MECQ) of the city until August 21, 2020, stricter guidelines are implemented and contact tracing for close contacts of confirmed COVID-19 cases is very essential in the fight against the spread of the virus in the community.
To note, the LGU authorized the operation of tricycles-for-hire, as they are being utilized as means to move around the city every day, for frontliners and essential travel amid the imposition of MECQ as long as they exercise minimum health standards, passenger restriction, and prohibition on back riding.
Being such, it is important to consider that the drivers have information or data on who their passengers are in order to help the city in the contact tracing process, in cases there is a confirmed case who rode a tricycle.
With the enactment of the ordinance, passengers are mandated to present a valid identification card to the driver before they could board the tricycle. Then the driver will fill-up the passenger’s information such as name, contact number and address, date and time of trip, and destination in the logbook.
All accredited tricycle operators and drivers association (TODA) in the city are required to provide the same passenger logbook in all of their designated parking areas.
Likewise, all backload passengers must also be recorded by the driver in a pocket notebook indicating their body number, point of loading and unloading, and the name, address and contact number of the passenger.
Tricycle operators and drivers are responsible for ensuring that all the data or information needed in their passenger logbooks shall be properly, accurately and completely filled-up and shall be dealt with confidentiality.
The ordinance has added safety measures to prevent data from being leaked – “Provided further, that the passenger logbook shall be kept in good condition and shall be used in COVID-19 contact tracing purposes only.”
In case that there will be a COVID-19 positive case, the president of the TODA, driver of the tricycle-for-hire (for non-TODA member), representative of the City Health Office or any authorized person designated by the Vigan City COVID-19 Task Force shall be given access to the logbook for verification and identification of people to whom a patient has had contact with.
In a public advisory posted on the official Facebook page of the LGU, Mayor Medina has repeatedly stressed the importance of cooperation of the residents in providing “factual” information to ensure effective and efficient contact tracing.
“We again remind the public of their responsibility to disclose accurate information in logbooks provided by establishments to ensure efficient and effective contact tracing. Inaccurate information will only defer our monitoring and eventually complicate our COVID-19 response,” he said.