QUEZON City Mayor Joy Belmonte on Thursday pressed the Department of Health (DOH) to provide the local health office with the complete information of COVID-19 patients who reside in the city to hasten contact tracing.
In a letter to Health Secretary Francisco Duque III, Belmonte said the DOH’s failure to promptly provide the necessary information has delayed the city government’s contact tracing efforts by several days.
She said this has also forced frontliners to spend more time in collating information from social media and other sources.
“The lack of available information from the outset, specifically addresses and contact numbers, amounting to half of all cases reported, delays contact tracing by days,” said Belmonte.
Belmonte said the city had also spent time and resources in coordinating with disease reporting units, laboratories and hospitals “to request information that should have been diligently filled up in the first place.”
Belmonte noted that 573 people out of the 1,224 COVID-19 cases reported by the DOH from August 1 to 2, through the COVID KAYA information system, have no specific address and contact numbers.
Belmonte said this forced the City Epidemiological Surveillance Unit to label the 573 as “unknown.” “This means that almost half of the reported cases… have no addresses and contact numbers, posing a major challenge in contact tracing,” she said, adding there’s even the possibility some of the 573 are not from the city.
Belmonte said the DOH also failed to provide information about hospitals or laboratories that conducted swab tests on 35 COVID-19 patients.
“With that, we appeal to your good office as Secretary of Health to set the vision and direction in improving data quality for rapid contact tracing,” Belmonte said.
Backing Belmonte’s call, CESU chief Dr. Rolly Cruz said it would be easier for the city’s contact tracers to perform their job with complete data on hand.
“The DOH would be of great assistance to our contact tracers if they will provide us with sufficient data. This way, we can cover more ground efficiently,” said Cruz.
As of Wednesday, there are 7,355 COVID-19 cases in the city with 309 deaths.
