By Fernan Angeles
WITH no more funds to defray the cost of hiring more personnel for the government’s Covid-19 response, cops are set to be deployed to do contact tracing to strengthen its effort to the public health crisis.
In an early morning interview aired over CNN Philippines, presidential spokesperson Harry Roque and Philippine National Police spokesperson Police Brigadier General Bernard Banac said on Wednesday that the government would tap policemen as contact tracers, to beef up what is deemed as a lean team from the Department of Health.
“The PNP [Philippine National Police] leadership has signified their conforme to this and they are in the process of training now the police officers that will act as contact tracers,” Roque told CNN-Philippines in an interview.
Banac hinted on existing PNP tams currently undergoing training in contat tracing.
Roque said former police general, now Baguio City Mayor Benjamin Magalong, the government’s contact tracing czar, tapped policemen to find the people in his city who may have been exposed to an infected person.
“He basically divided the city into groups, into clusters. And the police who are working in the area anyway are told also to perform contact tracing task. So they just operate within their geographical unit,” the Palace official said.
“And if in the course of talking to them they happen to come across a name who had close contact with the person in a different area, they simply communicate this to their counterpart in that particular area so that person can do contact tracing on that other person.”
To date, the government has already hired a total of 73,306 contact tracers. Hiring however was halted in view of a pending approval by Congress which has yet acted on the proposed Bayanihan to Recover as One Act.
Roque further hinted at the government’s recalibrated response to COVID-19. It embarks on:
• Placing the National Capital Region and the provinces of Cavite, Laguna, Rizal, and Bulacan under modified enhanced community quarantine from August 4 to 18.
• Construction of more isolation centers and more hotel rooms are being made available for the mandatory quarantine of individuals who are asymptomatic and with mild symptoms.
• The construction or expansion of several hospitals in Metro Manila is currently underway and is being fast-tracked to accommodate more patients while scaling up our health system capacity with more dedicated COVID-19 beds and hiring additional health workforce,” he said.
• An appeal to public to follow the minimum public health standards such as wearing masks/face shields, washing of hands, and keeping physical distance.