Galvez lauds Baguio tracing efforts
Through the tracing efforts of Magalong, he was able to reduce Baguio City’s COVID-19 cases from as high as 49 to zero
Presidential Peace Adviser Secretary and COVID-19 chief implementer Carlito Galvez Jr., on Tuesday lauded the contact tracing efforts of Baguio City Mayor and recently named national tracing czar Benjamin Magalong that led to the reduction of cases in his city.
During his report to President Rodrigo Duterte in Malacañang Palace on Monday night, Galvez said through the tracing efforts of Magalong, he was able to reduce Baguio City’s COVID-19 cases from as high as 49 to zero.
“General Magalong has done a great job in reducing cases from as high as 49 to zero. There were zero cases for almost two weeks, there were no new cases,” Galvez told the President and other members of the Cabinet and the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF-EID).
“So we are looking at his ability and this was also what Japan did, how to follow the trail of the infectious diseases,” he added. Through the efforts of Mayor Magalong, Galvez said they were also able to find out that the mayors in Metro Manila and other parts of the country have a lot of work to do in improving their contract tracing efforts.
“First and foremost on trace, we recently found out that what the mayors are doing is still lacking because most of them, when General Magalong made an assessment as NCR (National Capital Region) mayors gave their report, he also went to Cebu, to Region 4A, and now he is going to Region 3, we found out that the testing they are doing is still not enough because when we trace, the numbers are not that high. The ratio that we are getting is 1 is to 20 which is the highest while the others is 1 is to 3. It means there are those who are positive that still roam around,” he said.
“General Magalong has done a great job because of his passion, he meets with mayors and compares the experiences of other countries with Baguio to improve testing” he added.
Galvez said due to the continued increase of COVID-19 cases in the country, there is a need to focus on the four pillars in the fight against the virus: testing, tracing, isolation, and treatment.
“Because of the increasing number of COVID-19 cases, we need to focus on the four pillars because in other countries, these has greatly help in their over-all strategy,” he said
To also improve the fight against the virus, Galvez said he is recommending to use four hospitals in Metro Manila that will be dedicated exclusively for COVID-19 cases.
General Magalong has done a great job because of his passion, he meets with mayors and compares the experiences of other countries with Baguio to improve testing.
“It’s good for us to have in Metro Manila what we call core COVID hospitals because the problem is when we get the percentage of none-COVID beds, non-COVID patients are the ones who are compromised, those with dialysis, cancer, they’re the casualty,” he explained.
We will be recommending that if we will have zoning in NCR, we should have four COVID-dedicated hospitals. That’s what China did, within 10 days they built a COVID-dedicated hospital,” he added.
Galvez said increasing the intensive care unit and isolation beds of hospitals would also greatly help in reducing the number of deaths as a result of COVID-19.