MORE AGENCIES JOIN BAGUIO’S COVID- 19 TRACING TEAM

BAGUIO CITY: With an unseen enemy sharply padding up statistics in recent days, the Summer Capital is responding with more hands- on deck, hoping to sieve unsuspecting carriers of the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid- 19). Monitoring Covid- 19 developments at City Hall, Mayor Benjamin Magalong wasted no time phoning heads of the Police Regional Office- Cordillera and the Department of Health- Cordillera, asking for more hands to back up a contact tracing team soaked in a protracted battle. It could be remembered, Magalong ordered expanded targeted testing to include residents whose job tasks naturally exposes them to an undeterminable mix of people. The random tests, the city’s version of “mass testing,” immediately yielded more testing positive for Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2, the bug causing Covid- 19. Baguio currently has 22 contact tracing units composed of over 600 personnel from the Baguio City Police Office and the City Health Office. With numbers of Covid- 19 patients breaching the century mark, the mayor said there is a need for additional contact tracing units to backstop current hands who have been working “24/ 7” since the World Health Organization declared a pandemic. Magalong developed a local system of tracking contacts of Covid- 19 patients merging investigation devices he acquired while in uniformed service with prevailing medical protocols. The contact tracing scheme is now gold standard to a number of local government units nationwide. He said, “Our target [now] is to complete at least 80- to 90-percent [identification] of a patient’s contacts within three- days; have them tested; isolated or quarantined.” For her part, City Epidemiologist Dr. Donna Lorenzana Tubera-Panes said, private institutions are also encouraged to formulate their own contact tracing teams to be trained by the city for free. Recently, the Philippine Economic Authority Zone (PEZA); hospitals in the region; and, private business and academic establishments have sought city assistance in establishing their own contact tracing units.