DILG urges Congress to allocate P5-B fund for hiring contact tracers

THE Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) on Thursday appealed to Congress to allocate P5 billion fund to be used to hire 50,000 contact tracers.

With the increasing number of coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19l cases, the amount from the P162 billion fund under the Bayanihan to Recover as One Act would boost the country’s contact tracing capability, according to Interior Secretary Eduardo Año.

In a letter to Senate President Vicente Sotto 3rd and Senate Majority Leader Juan Miguel Zubiri,  Año proposed the hiring and training of qualified and competent persons to be members of contact tracing teams starting in September.

Currently, there are 7,000 contact tracing teams nationwide with 85,000 contact tracers.

However, Año said, there was a need to hire at least 50,000 more to meet the World Health Organization (WHO) recommended ratio of one contact tracer for every 800 people.

“We are racing against time.  Every single second counts and the longer we fail to expand our contact tracing capacity, the higher the probability that the virus spreads to more communities. We, therefore, need more contact tracers urgently to break the chain of transmission of this virus,” Año said in a statement.

In accordance with Resolution 25 of the Interagency Task Force on the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF-MEID), the DILG is the lead agency in contact tracing efforts.

Source: TheManila Times