Palace: Govt to tap PNP as Covid-19 contact tracers

THE government is considering tapping  the Philippine National Police (PNP) as contact tracers, Malacañang said on Wednesday, as it moves to boost its efforts against the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) pandemic.

Palace spokesman Harry Roque Jr. said the government would be scaling up the contact tracing strategy in Baguio City, where local policemen have been tapped as contact tracers.

“We need them as soon as possible but learning from the experience of Baguio, Mayor (Benjamin) Magalong did not have to recruit additional personnel. He’s using the PNP for contact tracing, which is something that we will also implement here,” Roque said during an interview with CNN Philippines.

“The PNP leadership has signified their conforme to this and they are in the process of training the police officers that will act as contact tracers,” he added.

In adopting Magalong’s scheme, Roque said the police would be used for contact tracing, while, “the local government units can hire and pay for additional contact tracers up to 150,000 of them.”

“The police because they are already employed by the government can be tapped to do the same chore without additional remuneration,” he said.

The Department of Health (DoH) said that it would need as many as 150,000 contact tracers to make the process more thorough and expansive.

Recently, President Rodrigo Duterte approved the Cabinet’s recommendation to bring back Metro Manila, Bulacan, Laguna, Rizal and Cavite under modified enhanced community quarantine (MECQ) status from August 4 to 18 to limit the spread of the coronavirus infections.

The move to put key areas under MECQ came after medical frontliners’ distress call to implement stricter quarantine measures to arrest the rapid spread of the coronavirus and unburden the overwhelmed hospitals.

The Philippines went past 112,000 in coronavirus cases as of Tuesday. These include 2,115 deaths and 66,049 recoveries.

Source: TheManila Times