Interior Undersecretary Jonathan Malaya said another 300 Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA) personnel will also participate in locating people who interacted with Covid-19 patients so they could undergo testing and be isolated.
“We think this number [of additional contact tracers] will be sufficient for now, but we are still coordinating with LGUs [local government units] if they will need additional contact tracers since they also hire [their own tracers],” Malaya said in an interview with PTV on Monday.
Malaya said the additional contact tracers were deployed in the National Capital Region (NCR) last week following the appeal of contact tracing czar Baguio City Mayor Benjamin Magalong for additional contact tracers.
Magalong said the additional tracers will help improve the low contact tracing ratio of LGUs, which is a 1 is to 6 or 7.
Ideally, he said the ratio for urban centers should be 1 is to 30 or 37 and for rural areas, 1 is to 25 to 30.
He attributed this to several factors: absence of cascading of contact tracing training from the provincial or regional level to municipalities; lack of data encoders; and the failure of some local chief executives to require the use of tracing protocols; and few contact tracers.
Last year, DILG has 50,000 employed contact tracers to augment the pool of contact tracers of LGUs.
However, the number of DILG contact tracers were reduced to 15,000 this year due to budget constraints.
It is now requesting for additional budget so it could hire additional contact tracers.
Image credits: AP/Aaron Favila