Vice President Leni Robredo on Sunday pressed the need to create a pandemic control platform to boost government’s contact tracing efforts in relation to its response to the coronavirus disease pandemic.
This was among the latest suggestions she shared with the administration during her weekly radio show to help in tracking down and alerting contacts of people who got exposed to the virus.
“Kasi kapag mina-mano-mano natin lahat, sobrang hirap. Alam ko ang DOH nag-hire ng napakaraming mga validators, napakaraming mag-aayos ng data. Okay naman iyon, pero iyong mano-mano matagal, iyong errors napakalaki,” she said.
(Because if we do everything manually, it would be too difficult. I know the DOH hired a lot of validators, those who can fix the data. That’s okay, but the manual process is long, the chances for errors are so high.)
Robredo underscored the public need to have app-based platform that would assign QR codes to everyone to monitor their symptoms and locations.
She noted this will be able to inform citizens of their exposure to COVID-19 cases and notify local governments if those infected have been in their vicinity for urgent response.
The vice president cited the effective contract tracing using such technology in other countries.
She was referring to Singapore’s mobile phone app Trace Together which can detect a person’s location and warn them if someone who tested positive for COVID-19 is near them. The others are the so-called electronic fence and Rakning C-19 in Taiwan and Iceland, respectively.
“Ang laking bagay sana na gamitin natin iyong technology para maiwasan itong kahirapang mag-validate, para maiwasan iyong napakaraming discrepancy,” she noted.
(The use of technology is important to prevent difficulties in validating and avoid many discrepancy.)
The vice president raised how slow the government’s contract tracing efforts where COVID-19 patients were reached by health authorities after they have already recovered.
For instance, she said her physician friend in a Pasay City hospital tested positive for coronavirus in April, but he was only reached for contact tracing last month.
“In fact na-hospitalize siya three weeks, so almost a month. Gumaling na siya. In fact, nagdu-duty ulit siya. The other day, nag-post siya sa Facebook nagko-contact sa kaniya iyong DOH. Hinihingi pa lang sa kaniya iyong details, eh ang tagal-tagal niya nang gumaling,” she narrated.
(In fact the person was hospitalized for three weeks, so almost a month. He was cured. The other day, he posted on Facebook that the DOH was contacting him. It was asking for details, but he has recovered a long time ago.)