NATIONAL Task Force-Contact Tracing Chief Benjamin Magalong and his team will hold training on contact tracing and link analysis to some 42 frontliners in the region tomorrow, August 19.
The seminar aims to train the teams composed of government health workers and Philippine National Police members tasked to trace contacts of Covid-19 cases in the region.
The contact tracing team whose members are health care workers such as doctors and nurses were trained on determining the level of risk of virus transmission, and the police for cognitive skills, said regional health department director Adriano Suba-an.
In an earlier Normin COVID-19 Response Task Force press conference, Suba-an said the training will include cognitive interviewing skills involving personnel from the police and health workers.
Suba-an added that Magalong prefers those who can articulate well and those with leadership qualities to join the said training. Thus, participants for such were carefully selected from the five provinces and two highly urbanized cities in the region.
Cognitive interviewing is similar to the questioning technique observed by PNP to retrieve information about a crime from eyewitnesses and victims.
This technique can be used effectively to gather information about COVID-19 patients and the people they interacted with.
On the same day, analytical tools will be taught to PNP-10 and information and communications technology (ICT) staff of local government units (LGUs).
In the analytical tool training, the participants will be taught using a domain where the LGUs can set up their COVID-19 database using their data collection tool. The information, when inputted to the link analysis software being used by the police, will generate links and data useful in contact tracing.
Aside from allowing them to utilize the domain and help them develop their websites, Magalong's team will also teach the frontliner on how to use both the data collection tool to build their database and the link analysis software for their contact tracing.
Suba-an said the training aims to beef up the LGUs' capacity in responding to COVID-19 cases in their areas thus, they carefully picked the participants and made sure that every province is well represented.
As of August 18, the region has 953 confirmed cases of COVID-19, of which 513 have recovered, 14 have expired, and 426 have recovered. (Recthie Tolinero/PIA10)
