Contact tracing and reopening economies

LETTERS FROM THE AGNO

March L. Fianza

BAGUIO CITY -- This time, Baguio Mayor Benjie Magalong was called to Cebu to explain to soldiers, policemen and medical frontline workers how the technology in contact tracing works. The DILG has acknowledged Baguio as the model to follow when it comes to contact tracing.

For more than two days last week, the mayor underscored again the importance of technology that greatly helps simplify the processes in contact tracing and identifying people and places in relation to the transmission of COVID-19 infections.

Health experts all over believe that it is this system that has to be created as it is one very important step to make prior to reopening safely the economy of an LGU. What happened in Cebu is the reverse. It reopened and relaxed its physical distancing first before organizing contract tracing teams.

In fact, a health official in Region 07 admitted that everybody was out of their houses when Cebu City and other areas transitioned from general community quarantine (GCQ) to enhanced community quarantine the first time.

Contact tracing is the most difficult process in fighting and containing COVID-19 infections. It can be used in containing other contagious diseases. Testing, treating and isolation or community quarantine which comes with wearing masks, physical distancing and observing health protocols are the other tools for containment.

The most ideal number of contact tracing teams is just one team composed of five members that includes a doctor and a crime investigator for a barangay of 5,000 population.

 Mayor Magalong, a retired police general was himself a former police investigator with the CIDG that he headed at one time during his stint in the uniform service.

He explained that the police investigator in the contact tracing team will do the cognitive interview, a method of extracting information from crime victims (patients) and possible eyewitnesses (contacts) “to get a clearer picture of what actually transpired in a crime scene”.

Contact tracing is essentially detective work, but the team has to work with a technical expert who handles data collection, uses of General Information Sheet (GIS) and link analysis, and other analytical tools.

On the first day that Mayor Magalong and his team of six touched down in Cebu early this week, there were at least 35 contact tracing teams that were processing data but there were also 6, 000 COVID-19 infection cases. Cebu City reported 7,015 COVID-19 cases on the first day Magalong and his team were there.

With that, plus an expected increase in cases, Cebu City Mayor Edgardo Labella had no choice but to augment the existing number to 80 contact tracing teams to be assigned to each of the 80 barangays.

However, a team should only handle two cases at the most because there are cases where first level contacts of just one person infected with Covid-19 can reach as many as 50 to a hundred people.

Initially from ECQ (enhanced community quarantine) to GCQ (general), Cebu was placed under ECQ again on June 15, 2020 because of the rising number of COVID-19 cases. And even when Cebu was again placed under ECQ, people still refused to do the minimum health standards, one LGU health worker claimed.

Contact tracing has to be in place first before physical distancing is relaxed because it identifies where the virus is and isolates it. It breaks chains of transmission to prevent future spikes and surges. And if cases are manageable, people are confident to go back to work. That should not be difficult to understand.