A total of 135 personnel of the Negros Occidental Police Provincial Office (NOCPPO) here support the contact tracing efforts of the provincial government in the fight against the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.
Police Lieutenant Wilma Silva, NOCPPO’s assistant public information officer, said the personnel came from various police stations in the province.
Silva said the team is composed of an investigator, an intelligence officer, an operations officer, and a police community relations officer.
These personnel will augment the composite team deployed for contact tracing, along with the Department of Health (DOH) and other concerned government agencies, she added.
The police contact tracers were deployed for about two weeks now, she said.
Meanwhile, the Army’s 303rd Infantry Brigade (IBde) is also in full support on the contact tracing efforts of the local government.
Colonel Inocencio Pasaporte, 303rd IBde commander, joined the 3rd metro seminar on contact tracing in Victorias City last week.
Pasaporte said the province needs to strengthen its contact tracing efforts because it is one important component in the COVID-19 efforts.
The Armed Forces have already deployed medical personnel to augment the local medical healthcare of Bacolod City and Negros Occidental, Pasaporte said.
“It is very important that the people of Negros and the local government units are cooperating to confront this health crisis,” he added.
Meanwhile, the Negros Occidental Police Provincial Office (NOCPPO) here has reported a total of 13 confirmed coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) cases among its personnel, including a non-uniformed personnel (NUP), as of September 15.
Police Major Edison Garcia, NOCPPO’s public information officer, said 12 policemen and one NUP were infected since July.
Garcia said three of the 12 policemen have already recovered from the infection, while the remaining nine are still currently on isolation in quarantine facilities. All were asymptomatic.
Of the nine active cases, five were assigned in hotels used as quarantine centers for overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) here, he added.
Garcia said they don’t have serious conditions and they are now on their way to recovery.
He said that individuals with close contact to the positive patients were immediately isolated and swabbed. Their results turned out negative.
He said the NUP has recovered from the virus, and has returned to work, along with three other recovered police officers. (Glazyl Masculino via The Daily Guardian (TDG), photo by TDG)