DILG-10 ENSURES INTEGRATION OF BARANGAY CLEARANCE BY BUKIDNON LGUS

         The 2,000 DILG-hired Contact Tracers contributed to the region’s improved Contact Tracing Efficiency, DOH-10 official affirmed during the Region 10 Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (R10 IATF-MEID) meeting on Wednesday, November 25.

         “Thanks to the augmentation on the number of contact tracers of the DILG to the LGUs, now all of our contact tracing parameters are already good, meaning to say, the contact tracing efficacy is very high. It’s almost 100%, in general,” DOH-10 Chief of Local Health Support Division, Dr. David Mendoza said during his presentation on Region 10’s Health Parameter Assessment Report.

         Contact Tracing Parameters include the number of contact tracers to population ratio and the number of confirmed cases to close contacts ratio.

         Currently, Region 10 has achieved a 1:187 contact tracer to population ratio which is an improvement to the World Health Organization (WHO) recommendation of 1:800. On the number of close contacts traced with that of the close contact line list, the whole of NorMin averaged at 99.05% classifying the region as low risk.

         R10 IATF-MEID Chair and DILG-10 Regional Director Arnel Agabe also thanked DOH-10 for the assistance in providing necessary trainings not only to the DILG-hired contact tracers but also to the LGU-hired.

         “We are in close coordination with DOH in ensuring that all 27,185 contact tracers in the region are equipped with the necessary competencies to effectively conduct COVID-19 contact tracing,” RD Agabe said.

         Aside from contact tracing, the DILG-hired contact tracers are tasked to carry out tasks like case investigation, active surveillance, public health risk assessment, health education, and data encoding.

         The 2,000 hired contact tracers are deployed in Bukidnon (141), Camiguin (30), Lanao del Norte (301), Misamis Occidental (217), Misamis Oriental (223), Cagayan de Oro City (476), and Iligan City (612).

        To further manage the increasing suspect case positivity rate, Dr. Mendoza encouraged the LGUs to look into the possible causes or to identify the gaps in their implementation of COVID-19 initiatives.

         As of November 25, total COVID-19 case in Region 10 is at 6,936 wherein only 981 is active.