President Rodrigo Duterte announced that the government has ramped up COVID-19 contact tracing efforts by signing up thousands of people to help in contact tracing across the country.
In his latest report to the Congress, Duterte said that as of June 24, 54,183 people have been hired nationwide, and they have traced and assessed 118,818 close contacts and 113,254 general contacts.
The Inter-Agency Task Force (IATF) is eyeing technology that can possibly fast-track this effort.
The StaySafe app, the country’s official contact tracing application, logs a person’s health status after it is entered in the app. To date, 240 local government units are using the app, while the rest report directly to the Department of Health though COVID KAYA, a digital app for frontliners.
Dr. Rabindra Abeyasin of the World Health Organization (WHO) representative to the Philippines emphasized that prioritizing investment in contact tracing is key to curtailing the further spread of COVID-19.
