THE CITY government has stepped up its contact tracing methods for faster identification of individuals exposed to confirmed cases before a swab test result is released.
“We want to be one step ahead in advising quarantine for people reported to be close contacts. So we distributed to our District Health Offices the contact list form and the history form,” Mayor Sara Duterte said on Friday’s broadcast of the Davao City Disaster Radio.
The contact list and history form refer to the document where the confirmed cases will list down their close contacts and history of travel.
The forms must then be returned to the District Health Office within 24 hours to make sure that there is no delay in advising the possible infected individuals to self-isolate.
The mayor said that the city is also tracing the close contacts of those who had exposures to a COVID-19 positive case to ensure they also immediately undergo the 14-day quarantine to contain the spread of the coronavirus.
“We will not wait for the results within 24 hours, we will just tell the people to do quarantine,” she explained. “We also want to advise the close contacts of those close contacts of the swabbed person to undergo quarantine.”
The mayor bared that the city is developing a new electronic system for contact tracing to locate the close contacts more efficiently.
