Despite its importance, contact tracing is ‘slow’ in the Philippines–WHO
Published June 27, 2020 12:36am
Although contact tracing is vital in containing the spread of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), the World Health Organization (WHO) says the process is slow in the Philippines.
“I would say we are slow. We need to push harder and we really need to work harder,” said Dr. Socorro Escalante of WHO Philippines on an episode of “Need To Know” on Friday.
Contact tracing should be done within two days once a patient is confirmed positive with COVID-19.
It is a process that identifies who the COVID-19 patients have interacted with so they can be immediately isolated and not contaminate other people.
However, WHO said that the Philippines usually waited for the test results of the COVID-19 case to start contact tracing, and the results came out after days or even weeks.
WHO recommended that there should be at least one contact tracer for every 800 people. This means that the country should have at least 135,000 of them. However, only 50,000 are available to deal with 100 million Filipinos.
Apart from the shortage in contact tracers, there is also a lack in meticulous tracing.
The first three cases in the country, who were all tourists from Wuhan, China, were able to interact with over 1,195 people.
However, only half of those people, or 552, were interviewed and observed. Over 60 of them showed signs of COVID-19.
As of Thursday, the country has 33,069 confirmed COVID-19 cases, with 1,212 deaths and 8,910 recoveries. – RC, GMA News
