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CEBU CITY, Philippines — Cebu City needs 270 contact tracers so that each barangay in Cebu City will have one contact tracing team.
City Administrator Floro Casas, Jr., said that they already had 5 contact tracers from the city government, and they recently hired 120 contact tracers, who were in training.
There are also five-city government employees who will be part of the contact tracers.
Since the city needs 400 contact tracers, Casas is inviting qualified individuals to send in their application to the City Hall.
He said that college graduates with medical backgrounds are encouraged to apply since they already have basic knowledge of medical safety.
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“Of course we will provide them a daily rate. We really need the contact tracers and immediately so we can begin deploying them to the barangays,” said Casas.
The daily rates were not revealed by Casas, but he assured the contact tracers would be properly compensated for the risky job.
The Cebu City government aims to intensify the contact tracing and testing in the city and increase it by 1,000 to 3,000 tests per day.
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According to Health Secretary Francisco Duque, III, testing is an important factor in the response to COVID-19, as this would identify the extent of the spread of the virus.
Department of Health (DOH) said that the testing capacity of the city was only 6,000 tests per day, and the city government was determined to increase this in the next few weeks.
Mayor Edgardo Labella is also determined to achieve this increased testing capacity.
“We have 80 contact tracing teams in training before they will be deployed. A lot of people are saying we should just stop the testing, so we will not have higher cases, but it is our responsibility to know the extent of the spread of the virus,” he said./dbs