DILG Bulacan headed by PD Darwin D. David, spearheaded the conduct of Provincial Roll-out on Enhancing COVID-19 Tracing Work: Advanced Guide for Local Government and Contact Tracers on July 16, 2021 via Zoom meeting platform.

 It was attended by Barangay Officials, LGU Contact Tracers, Philippine National Police (PNP), Bureau of Fire Protection (BFP) personnel, members of the Barangay Health Emergency Response Team (BHERT) and LGU volunteers from the province of Bulacan.

The said activity aimed to scale-up the country's contact tracing efforts and to employ new strategies and approaches to enhance contact tracing work at the community level.

For the first session, Rosanna S. Rosell, Regional Epidemiologist from the Department of Health (DOH) Regional Office 3 presented the latest developments on COVID-19 situations focusing on the present situation, COVID response strategies and updates on new variants.

The second session which was presented by Hon. Benjamin B. Magalong, City Mayor of Baguio City and Contact Tracing Czar presented the city's contact tracing system and LGU's best practices that aided them immensely in their COVID-19 response.

Further, PLTCOL Armelina S. Manalo of PNP-CIDG, Camp Crame, Quezon City discussed on cognitive interviewing and simulation exercise to educate not only contact tracers but all concerned citizens in identifying, assessing, and managing people who have been exposed to the infectious disease and to prevent its spread.

Lastly, a conversation café was facilitated by DILG Bulacan Provincial Office Staff and DILG Hired Contact Tracers where participants shared the areas of attention to enhance contact tracing at the LGU level and proposed corresponding actions.

PD Darwin, in his closing message, emphasized that our battle against COVID 19 is far from over. Hence, he is hoping that the activity helped the participants to increase their efforts in timely contact tracing, speedy identification and tracking of close contacts and data management and analysis.