As part of efforts to enhance contact tracing, City Health Services Officer Rowena Galpo is encouraging the public to record their daily activities in a journal.
Galpo said there are times when contact tracing hits a snag because those found positive of the Covid-19 cannot recall their movement especially in the last 14 days.
“Hindi naman siguro sa may gusto silang itago. It could also be because of recall,” Galpo said.
She said keeping a journal of daily movement – of where one went and whom they interacted with – would help hasten tracking of possible contacts of a positive case.
The CHSO has come up with several measures to intensify its contact tracing, including asking those who tested positive to reveal their identity to inform people whom they had in contact to seek medical consult.
Recently, Mayor Benjamin Magalong beefed up the city’s contact tracing teams in the light of the surge in Covid-19 cases in the past days.
The mayor has asked Baguio City Police Office Director Col. Allen Rae Co to orient more investigators and intelligence personnel on cognitive interviewing to team up with the CHSO team in tracking down contacts of the new patients.
Co has appointed six more Crisis Intervention Team (CIT)-trained investigators to the pool of contract tracers so that they now have 20 in the field, 14 from the BCPO and six from the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group.
Galpo said the city has several contact tracing teams currently working double time. She said one patient has an average of 50 contacts while some have as high as 100.
To supplement the contact tracers’ efforts, the CHSO also uses a computer-aided system as a complementary tool. – Rimaliza A. Opiña with Aileen P. Refuerzo
