THE Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) has recruited 226 more contact tracers for Valenzuela this month to help further capacitate the city in tracking potential Covid-19 carriers.
Complementing the existing 140-strong contact tracing team of the city, they are expected to double the locality’s current operations for its response to the unprecedented health crisis.
The local government unit (LGU) welcomed the 173 of them who were present during the special orientation and training held at the Valenzuela City People’s Park Amphitheater last week.
In the seminar conducted by the City Health Office (CHO), the first batch of DILG contact tracers were trained in proper disease surveillance and contact tracing, handling data privacy and the use of the ValTrace application—the latest addition to its contact tracing platform that uses QR codes and location history.
The CHO has already held three batches of contact tracing and surveillance training seminars for the city-hired contact tracers, data encoders, and City Epidemiology and Surveillance Unit staff since the latter part of August.
Of the newly DILG-recruited contact tracers in attendance during the orientation, majority came from Valenzuela while some hailed from Manila, Navotas and Bulacan.
Contrary to the city-employed contact tracers manning the Valenzuela City Mega Contact Tracing Center, they were deployed to different barangays to do field work.
They now provide assistance to the local Barangay Health Emergency Response Teams in their contact tracing efforts on the community level.
While the DILG serves as their employer, the LGU is responsible for assigning the job responsibilities, deployment areas and schedule of the new contact tracers.
Per their contract, the service that they render will last until December 31.
The DILG targets to hire a total of 400 contact tracers for Valenzuela.
Application is still ongoing. Interested individuals may check out the DILG Contract Tracing Portal at https://ct-ncr.com/.