Contact tracing system deteriorated in the past four weeks —Magalong

Contact tracing system in the Philippines has deteriorated in the past few weeks, contact tracing czar and Baguio City Mayor Benjamin Magalong said on Tuesday, amid the dramatic surge in the number of COVID-19 cases in the country.

In a House Committee on Health meeting, Magalong said the national contact tracing efficiency ratio has decreased from 1:7 to 1:3 in the past four weeks.

"For the past four weeks, you can see that it really deteriorated and look at the average, from 1:7, this is the national average, from 1:7, it went down to 1:3," he said.

Magalong explained that when the ratio is only at 1:3, it means only the patient's family members have been traced and not his or her other contacts.

"Technically, wala pong contact tracing diyan because ang gagawin lang ng isang contact tracer, ia-announce lang ho niya na 'yung positive patient, hanapin niya 'yung members ng household and i-quarantine," Magalong said.

(Technically, there is no contact tracing being done because what the contact tracer would do is just announce the positive patient, then look for the other members of the household and quarantine them.)

One of the reasons for this decrease was that many local government units have failed to utilize a uniformed data collection tool, according to Magalong.

Some close-contact data were also not properly encoded, he added. --KBK, GMA News