Government’s contact-tracing average ratio only 1:7

MANILA, Philippines — Speaker Lord Allan Velasco has filed a resolution seeking the creation of a unified contact tracing protocol to boost the government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Velasco urged the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases to improve the country’s ratio of contact tracers to close contacts of COVID-19 patients.

He said the Philippines is only able to identify about seven contacts per infected person or a ratio of 1:7 when the ideal contact tracing ratio should be 1:37 for urban areas and 1:30 for rural communities.

In filing House Resolution 1536, Velasco underscored the need to strengthen the government’s contact tracing efforts using the most effective and safest system.

“Contact tracing is a public health strategy to dramatically decrease the impact of the pandemic. It has been used for years to combat communicable diseases such as the Ebola outbreak in 2014 and SARS in 2003,” he said.

Velasco said the proposed unified national contact tracing protocol should include the designation of a government agency as the centralized repository of information to facilitate a faster health emergency response system.

The protocol should also include a secure, encrypted transmission of data, a unified data procedure for solution providers, compliance with the Data Privacy Act and the provision of real-time data access to accredited contact tracing app providers.

Deputy Speaker Mikee Romero of 1Pacman party-list supported Velasco’s resolution.

“Improving our contact tracing efforts is one way of eradicating or minimizing the spread of the virus,” Romero said.