THE SENATE recently had a Committee of the Whole hearing to discuss updates on the COVID-19 pandemic situation and response. There, I asked about how contact tracing was done here in the country.
I was COVID-19 patient number 754. I was diagnosed positive on March 26, then I was hospitalized for about ten days. I was discharged around the first week of April. And yet, the first call I had from the Department of Health was on April 24.
It seemed to me that contact tracing at that point would be moot, as it had nearly been a month after I had been diagnosed, and 18 days after I left the hospital.
The answer I received was that the laboratories would contact composite teams — comprised of individuals from the Department of Health and the Department of the Interior and Local Government — and from there, patients would be contacted. However, I was — and am — still concerned. When dealing with something like COVID-19, time is of the essence.
South Korea, for example, uses information such as personal data, credit card records, and location data from cellphones as part of contact tracing. This of course has ramifications for data privacy and personal freedoms. The United Kingdom will roll out an app that will determine if a person may be a COVID-19 patient through a questionnaire, and then send an alert to other users who may have been close to that person for an extended period.
Other countries, like the Czech Republic and Finland, have used location data taken from mobile devices, but again, there are issues with privacy. Germany is doing something similar, but using Bluetooth technology. While it is not as accurate, the invasion of privacy will be minimized.
New Zealand, on the other hand, takes a different tack, with contact tracing beginning with phone calls from the National Close Contact Service, a centralized organization for contact tracing.
Here in the Philippines, New Zealand’s approach is mirrored in the way that the Baguio City LGU and Mayor Benjamin Magalong has approached contract tracing. There, they pair health authorities and police investigators, so that the overall skill set of a tracing team is both for medical and tracking where people went, and who they could have been with.
The team also assesses contact tracing according to different risk levels. And finally, the Baguio City LGU considers speed as particularly important, given how infectious COVID-19 is.
Indeed, technology can be a powerful tool in our fight to track where the virus could strike next. Like some of the other countries, apps have been developed locally that mirror many of the other apps that have been developed abroad. StaySafe.ph, developed by Multisys Technologies Corporation and approved by the Inter-Agency Task Force, is similar to the UK’s questionnaire app, as it keeps track of symptoms that a person may be experiencing. TanodCOVID, on the other hand, is a platform specifically for LGUs to use to track possible COVID-19 sufferers.
But for all these tools that can help us with contact tracing, we must remember that technology is just a tool — albeit a powerful one. Ultimately, what’s urgently needed is a system that can deliver information to the right people in real time so that better decisions can be made faster.
This is why we express our full support for Finance Secretary Sonny Dominguez’s call for the mass hiring of contact tracers. With more boots on the ground, we can speed up our response time, so long as we train these tracers well. Towards that end, the DILG could distill the experiences of exemplar LGUs like Baguio City and make sure that lessons learned are shared nationwide.
As I said in the Committee of the Whole hearing, perhaps it is necessary to create a position and organization within the IATF whose job is to direct how and where information goes, and ensure that such goes there as fast as possible.
Currently, BCDA President Vince Dizon has been designated as the country’s 3T Czar (test, trace, treat), and has been collaborating with the private sector in ramping up our testing capacity. The same synergies could also be directed towards our contact tracing efforts.
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Sen. Sonny Angara has been in public service for 15 years — nine years as Representative of the Lone District of Aurora, and six as Senator. He has authored and sponsored more than 200 laws. He is currently serving his second term in the Senate. (Email: sensonnyangara@yahoo.com| Facebook, Twitter & Instagram: @sonnyangara)/PN
