To provide the much-needed capacity to Valenzuela City’s contact tracing efforts, the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) hires 226 more contact tracers for the city this month – expected to double its current operations for its localized COVID-19 response.

As the City Government welcomes the first batch of DILG contact tracers during the special orientation and training held at the Valenzuela City People’s Park Amphitheater today, October 20, it is now more confident that the supplement in its operations will provide for a more efficient contact tracing management as new members of the contact tracing team joins the City’s workforce.  

In the seminar conducted by the City Health Office (CHO), the 226 newly-hired contact tracers were trained in proper disease surveillance and contact tracing, handling data privacy and the use of the ValTrace App – Valenzuela’s newest addition to its contact tracing platform utilizing the use of QR codes and location history.

Since the last week of August, the CHO has already held three (3) batches of contact tracing and surveillance training seminars for the City-hired contact tracers, data encoders, and City Epidemiology and Surveillance Unit (CESU) staff.

Of the 173 new contact tracers who were present during the orientation, majority came from Valenzuela City and some hailed from the other cities like Manila and Navotas and the nearby province of Bulacan. The DILG-hired contact tracers are expected to complement the 140-strong contact tracing team of the City and to render their service until December 31, 2020.

In contrast to the City-hired contact tracers manning the Valenzuela City Mega Contact Tracing Center, those hired by the DILG will be deployed to the different barangays in Valenzuela to conduct field work. This is also expected to be of big help to the local Barangay Health Emergency Response Teams (BHERTs) in their contact tracing efforts on the barangay level.

While the DILG serves as their employer, the local government is responsible for assigning the job responsibilities, deployment areas and schedule of the new contact tracers.

The DILG is targeting to hire a total of 400 hundred contact tracers for Valenzuela City. Application is still ongoing and interested parties may check out the DILG Contract Tracing Portal at https://ct-ncr.com/.