La Union to use Baguio’s contact tracing system
SAN FERNANDO CITY, La Union – The provincial government of La Union will pilot the use of Baguio City’s contact tracing application system here to strengthen disease surveillance through contact tracing, and contain the spread of coronavirus disease (COVID-19).
In a Facebook post on Thursday, the provincial government said the use of such contact tracing e-system aims to enhance the province’s existing COVID-19 dashboard for a more in-depth and evidence-based analysis to facilitate proactive, faster, and efficient tracing of COVID-19 contacts.
“The geographic information system captures, stores, manipulates, analyzes, manages, and presents all types of geographical data related to COVID-19 cases. It overlays COVID-19 affected areas, district or barangay affectations, areas of checkpoints and lockdowns, barangay health centers, hospitals, satellite markets, and other critical facilities. Through this system, one can visualize Covid-19 data in many ways that reveal relationships, patterns, and trends and its confirmed cases and its possible spread of infections,” the post read.
It added the analytical tool-link analysis provides different views on how one patient could infect or transfer the virus to others by looking into their daily activities.
“It shows gaps and creates more opportunities on how to properly track down close contacts of the patient through the timeline,” the provincial government said.
As a result of the meeting between La Union Governor Francisco Emmanuel Ortega and Baguio Mayor Benjamin Magalong, the appointed contact tracing czar of the country, Baguio‘s contact tracing team cascaded the system to selected personnel from the La Union Police Provincial Office (LUPPO) and the Provincial Incident Management Team (PIMT) the provincial government of La Union on August 5.
The pilot area of the study will be in San Fernando City as the number of COVID-19 cases continues to increase.
On August 6, the city recorded 12 new coronavirus cases.
In a statement, Mayor Alfredo Pablo Ortega said all the new cases were within Purok 2A of Barangay San Agustin, and they were not allegedly exposed to a COVID-19 patient.
Ortega has ordered total lockdown in the barangay, while the patients were in an isolation facility.
As of 5 p.m. of August 6, La Union has a total of 123 confirmed cases, 59 of them are admitted, 55 have been discharged or recovered, one on a strict home quarantine, and eight have died.