Baguio contact tracing teams to help Cebu City, police exec says

Central Visayas police chief Police Brigadier General Albert Ignatius Ferro on Wednesday said Baguio City Mayor Benjamin Magalong and his team would help in the contact tracing efforts of Cebu City.

"Actually, we requested the help of my former boss and he is very much willing to train our people on the contact tracing. It will be based primarily on the cognitive interviewing techniques which most of our policemen are trained with," Ferro said at a press briefing.

"We hope that this coming days or next week, the technical team of Baguio City and members of the team of General Magalong or General Magalong will be coming to help us," he added.

Magalong, former director of the Philippine National Police - Criminal Investigation and Detection Group, has been stressing the importance of contact tracing in the efforts to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

Baguio City was earlier hailed as a model local government unit for managing to keep its COVID-19 cases low.

According to Cebu City Mayor Edgar Labella, the local government has prepared 80 contact tracing teams through the help of the Department of Health as more testing kits were provided to the city.

Labella said the training of contact tracers began on Tuesday.

Cebu City remains under enhanced community quarantine due to the increasing number of COVID-19 cases in the area.

On Tuesday, it logged 353 new COVID-19 cases, the highest number of new cases it reported in a single day, raising the total to 5,494.

The Cebu City Health Department also said total recoveries rose to 2,723 after 10 more patients recovered from the respiratory illness, while the death toll remained at 169 with no new fatalities. — MDM/RSJ, GMA News