Tarlac City, Tarlac – in order to suppress the COVID-19 pandemic in the country, the national government through the Department of the Interior and Local Government hired 50,000 contact tracers nationwide to help immediately identify the close contacts of confirmed COVID-19 patients.

 DILG Tarlac under the leadership of Provincial Director Belina T. Herman conducted two (2) face-to-face trainings for the newly-hired contact tracers in the province on October 19 and 27, 2020 at the Bulwagang Kanlahi and Bulwagan ng mga Gubernador, respectively.

Focal Person LGOO V Rod Mark Salvador initially reminded the contact tracers about the administrative requirements they need to complete the soonest such as the processing of their ATM accounts, SSS, and PhilHealth.

During the series of trainings, PD Herman provided an overview and discussed the guiding principles of contact tracing in the country, which she described as a crucial element that LGUs need to adopt to suppress the transmissions. She also emphasized that a whole-of-government approach is needed to properly implement the national policies in the LGUs.

Finally, she discussed the End-to-end T3 Management System which employs testing, tracing, and treatment that can be used by LGUs in decision-making and initiating local programs to halt the spread of the disease.

Program Manager and concurrent DILG Officer of Anao Jessica Esguerra situated contact tracing in public safety and health security. She explained that in order for countries to ensure that their people are healthy, they should immediately detect diseases which has a great impact to national economy. Also, Ms. Esguerra connected contact tracing with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN-SDGs) which aims for global health security.

Cluster Leader and concurrent DILG Officer of Camiling Renalyn Iglesias presented the epidemiological aspect of COVID-19 to include the timeline of the World Health Organization and the Philippines in addressing the situation from the onset of the pandemic early this year and the basic information such as the virus' incubation period, signs and symptoms, and when the disease is highly infectious.

LGOO VI Paul Michael Blanco of DILG Concepcion defined who are the close contacts that need to be identified by the contact tracers upon deployment in their respective assignments. He also explained when contact tracing will commence and how many days will be counted for a person to be considered a close contact.

LGOO VI Bryan Rivera of DILG Pura emphasized the categories of close contacts as well as the three (3) basic steps in contact tracing namely: contact identification, contact profiling, and conduct of follow through activities to monitor whether the close contacts developed signs and symptoms during their home quarantine period. He also distinguished quarantine from isolation. By definition, quarantine is done to prevent the possible transmission of diseases even if a person has no symptoms or has not been diagnosed with the disease. Isolation, on the other hand, separates the persons who are already experiencing symptoms to prevent the transmission of the virus.

LGOO VI Cherry Eve Mesina of DILG Victoria explained the contact tracing form that some of them may populate once they are deployed in the LGU. The form was formerly used by the DILG officers to regularly update the central office on the daily count of contacts identified and traced by the LGUs upon the identification of a confirmed COVID-19 or suspected case.

Cluster Leader Fortunato Abraham III discussed the key points on effective communication skills to effectively gather all the necessary information about close contacts in the LGU. His presentation includes the correct manner of asking questions and empathizing with the people they come into contact with. This would ensure trust among the people whose information is vital in containing the infection.

The 2nd and 3rd batches of trainings for the contact tracers were made possible in partnership with the Provincial Government of Tarlac through Governor Susan A. Yap. The trainings came after Tarlac completed the initial target of hiring 450 contact tracers who will be deployed in their LGUs. By LGOO VI Bryan N. Rivera