The Philippine National Police (PNP) will be tapped in contact tracing of persons who may have been exposed to the 2019 novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19), said Presidential Spokesman Harry Roque on Wednesday, Aug. 5.
“The PNP leadership has signified their conforme to this and they are in the process of training the police officers that will act as contact tracers,” the spokesman said during an interview over CNN Philippines.
Amid the need to raise the number of contact tracers from 77,000 to 150,000, Roque said the government is adopting the experiences of contact tracing czar and Baguio City Mayor Benjamin Magalong.
“He’s using actually the PNP for contact tracing which is something we would also implement here,” Roque said as he cited the steps made by Magalong in Baguio City.
In adopting Magalong’s scheme, Roque said the police will be used for contact tracing, while, “the local government units can hire and pay for additional contact tracers up to 150,000 of them.”
“The police because they are already employed by the government can be tapped to do the same chore without additional remuneration,” he pointed out.
Recently, President Duterte declared Metro Manila, Laguna, Bulacan, Cavite, and Rizal placed under modified enhanced community quarantine (MECQ) in response for the call of the medical community for a “time out” as they have grown fatigued and weary over the rise in the number of COVID-19 cases in the country.
Roque said the Philippines is not the only country which has experienced spikes in COVID-19 cases.
“Well we’re not alone. It’s not as if it’s just happening in the Philippines,” said Roque who cited news reports that “70 percent of all countries in the world have recorded spikes lately.”
“We have not confirmed whether this has happened in the Philippines but there are reports that the virus has mutated. It has become far more infectious than it was,” he added.
Despite this, Roque pointed out that in the Philippines “deaths or mortality rate remain very low.”
“An overwhelming 98.5 percent of the cases continue to be asymptomatic or mild so though there deaths we are keeping the deaths at a minimum. We’re way within the threshold the five percent mortality rate considered as acceptable by the international community,” the spokesman also cited.
“For the 1.5 percent that statistically could be afflicted with the disease in a critical manner we are expanding our capacity to provide critical care, we’re building more ICU (intensive care units) beds,” he assured.
Aside from this, Roque has assured that the Department of Health (DOH) is hiring for more health workers to work in areas under MECQ which is need of manpower to take care those who are ill from COVID-19.
“Most of the nurses will be working in private hospitals and since it is the DOH employing them, whether temporarily or permanently, they will be enjoying the benefits of government health workers which is substantially more compared to what private hospitals are paying them,” he assured.
“So there’s already a pay incentive there and there’s also other incentives thrown their way such as free accommodation, free testing and free insurance,” he added.
The spokesman said that the government also intends to do more than the 32,000 daily tests it is already conducting.
He disclosed that the government is pilot testing in Makati City this week pool testing of polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests where in a pool of five to 10 persons will use one test kit.
Roque said this will further increasing testing capacity and make it cheaper to conduct tests.