San Juan City fights off COVID-19 with hundreds of contact tracers

MANILA - San Juan employed some 300 contact tracers for a more effective targeted testing and imposed localized lockdown to reduce active COVID-19 cases in the city, Mayor Francis Zamora said Tuesday.

The city trained some of its local government employees to be contact tracers and also tapped into the pool collated by the national government. They are paid about P19,000 a month, with a contract good for 4 months, said Zamora.

"We push ourselves to get more contact tracers because we feel and we believe that it’s helping our city bring down the numbers," he told ANC's Headstart, explaining that they test up to 37 close contacts of one confirmed COVID-19 case.

According to a callout Zamora posted on his Instagram page, templates for a letter of intent and personal data sheet may be downloaded at contacttracing.ncr.dilg.gov.ph and completed documents may be submitted via email to ct.dilgsanjuan@gmail.com.

San Juan also locked down streets, buildings, or homes where there were confirmed cases, instead of imposing a wider lockdown on the entire barangay or the whole city, said Zamora.

"We are seeing a steady decline in the numbers in our city, but this is not the time to relax, this is not the time to be complacent," he said.

"Going out means a lot of discipline within ourselves to ensure that we do not get sick and we do not infect others also who may be waiting for us at home," he added.

Zamora reported that San Juan has 217 active cases of the total 2,717 confirmed COVID-19 cases, as of September 28. There were 2,427 recovered patients, while 73 died from the disease.

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