249,000 contact tracers to be retrained on new COVID-19 variants

The government will retrain 249,000 contact tracers starting next week to address new variants of the coronavirus, contact tracing czar and Baguio city mayor Benjamin Magalong said on Friday.

Magalong made the announcement a day after President Rodrigo Duterte placed Metro Manila, Bulacan, Cavite, Rizal, Laguna, City of Santiago in Isabela, Abra, Quirino and Ifugao under the modified enhanced community quarantine protocol (MECQ) until May 14.

The MECQ protocol bans non-essential trips and partially shuts down non-essential businesses and services.

“We will retrain 249,000 contact tracers next week,” Magalong said in a DZBB interview.

“We will focus on going beyond the third generation of close contacts. We should aspire for that given there are different variants of the coronavirus [which are more contagious],” Magalong added.

Magalong said that the 249,000 does not include the 5,000 individuals that the Department of Labor and Employment and the Department of Interior and Local Government will be hiring in May.

“Majority of them will be deployed in NCR (National Capital Region), then in Regions 3 and 4A,” Magalong said.

NCR remains the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic in the country, with 46,790 COVID-19 cases recorded in the area in the last two weeks.

Last Thursday, the Philippines recorded 69,354 active COVID-19 cases.

Of this number, 8,276 were new infections. --NB, GMA News