Contact tracing futile sans full COVID info
The DoH would be of great assistance to our contact tracers if they provide us with sufficient data
The Quezon City government appealed to the Department of Health (DoH) to ensure complete information on all positive coronavirus diseased individuals to hasten the local government unit’s (LGU) contact tracing efforts.
In a letter addressed to DoH Secretary Francisco Duque III, the Quezon City mayor said the agency’s failure to provide complete information in some cases delays contact tracing by days and forces front liners to spend valuable time looking for the needed information from other possible sources, including social media.
She said, “The lack of available information from the outset, specifically addresses and contact numbers, amounting to half of all cases reported, delays contact tracing by days.”
Due to the lack of information, the local executive also said precious time and resources are spent in coordinating with disease reporting units (DRU), laboratories and hospitals to request information that should have been diligently filled up in the first place.
As the QC LGU emphasized on 3 August, the DOH reported 1,224 COVID-19 cases two days prior through its COVID KAYA information system.
Of those, 401 were already in the city epidemiological surveillance unit (CESU) master file of confirmed cases or previously contacted and contact traced by CESU. Another 241 cases have addresses or contact numbers or were previously reported by the QC Health
Department.
However, 573 of those cases or 47 percent have no addresses or contact numbers, forcing the CESU to label them as “unknown.”
The city mayor also said it is possible these cases may not even be QC residents. “This means that almost half of the reported cases tagged as QC in the KAYA info system for these days have no addresses and contact numbers, posing a major challenge in contact tracing.”
She also said the DoH failed to provide information about which hospitals or laboratories conducted the swab tests of 35 positive cases.
“With that, we appeal to your good office as Secretary of Health to set the vision and direction in improving data quality for rapid contact tracing,” the local executive said.
The DoH provides financial and non-financial incentives for quality data and imposes penalties or sanctions for incomplete information or failure to report data.
As the local government of Quezon city increases its investment in logistics and human resources for contact tracing, it also hopes the efforts are matched by leadership and action from DoH in improving data quality.
CESU head Dr. Rolly Cruz said it would be easier for the contact tracers to perform their job with complete data on hand.
“The DoH would be of great assistance to our contact tracers if they provide us with sufficient data. This way, we can cover more ground efficiently. ”
QC LGU recently procured a fleet of 15 vehicles to add to the 15 already being used and put together an army of 700 contact tracers to heed the national government’s call to ramp up contact tracing.