TACLOBAN CITY – More than 600 volunteers from 138 villages in this city are going to be trained as COVID-19 surveillance officers.
This was revealed by city health officer Dr. Gloria Fabregas who said that the volunteers include barangay health workers, barangay nutrition scholars, and barangay service point officers.
These barangay personnel, considered to be part of the community dengue brigade, will be called Volunteers Service Officers (VSO) whose training will start on August 3.
Fabregas said that deploying these barangay personnel is part of their campaign to engage every home to be part of the fight against COVID-19 or coronavirus disease 2019.
“We are engaging and empowering every home for the fight against COVID-19, for a healthy Tacloban because the battle against this virus starts at home and not in the hospital,” she said.
As VSO, their primary work is to do surveillance in their respective villages, identifying who are vulnerable to COVID-19, Fabregas added.
“As VSO, they will identify households with residents who are vulnerable to the virus such as pregnant women, and households with positive COVID-19 patients,” she said.
The information that they will get from the surveillance will be forwarded to the barangay health emergency response team (BHERT) and this information will be send to the Quick Response Team.
At present, Tacloban City has six active cases of COVID-19.
The city has a total of 64 COVID-19 cases where 58 had now recovered from the disease. Of these 64 cases, 53 are local, nine locally stranded individuals while two are returning Overseas Filipino Workers.
(ROEL T. AMAZONA)
