CALOOCAN CITY, April 28 (PIA) -- The Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) is extensively contact tracing its workers who may have been exposed to COVID-19 infection after the recent death of a public works employee in Metro Manila.
During Tuesday’s edition of the Laging Handa briefing powered by the Presidential Communications Operations Office and attached government media, DPWH Secretary Mark Villar said contract tracing is currently being done and that DPWH employees have voluntarily submitted themselves to self-quarantine while awaiting test results from testing laboratories.
“Nag-contact tracing na kami at nag-quarantine din ‘yung iba,” Villar said to avert further virus transmission by DPWH frontliners who labored to convert the Philippine International Convention Center in Pasay City into a health isolation facility. PICC is among the state-owned facilities, that have been transformed to temporarily house COVID-19 patients.
"Pina-test din namin buong district engineering office. Mabuti naman at nag-negative sila. So far, wala pa namang [positive] cases at naging effective din ang social distancing at pagsuot ng protective equipment," the official added.
Health experts eye extensive contact tracing and rapid isolation of potentially infected individuals as effective strategies to curbing COVID-19 and may help reduce the interaction between infectious people and others in the community.
Contact tracing, as defined by the World Health Organization, involves closely monitoring individuals after exposure to an infected person in order to help the contacts get appropriate care and treatment and prevent further virus transmission.
Tracking of these COVID-19 suspects involves three basic steps, namely: contact identification, contact listing, and contact follow-up.
To recall, the Office of Civil Defense is now in charge of leading government’s contact-tracing efforts amid the COVID-19 pandemic as pointed in the guidelines approved by the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases on April 8. (PIA NCR)
Source: Philippines Information Agency (pia.gov.ph)
0 Comments