Jeepney Drivers As Contact Tracers For COVID-19 Suspects?

Malacañang Mulls Jeepney Drivers As COVID-19 Contact Tracers

JEEPNEY DRIVERS AS CONTACT TRACERS – Malacañang may see a new ally in the fight against COVID-19 – out of work jeepney drivers.

Due to the effects of the community quarantine protocols, thousands of jeepney drivers have lost their source of income. As such, the government floated the idea of using hitting two birds with one stone.

According to an article from ABS-CBN, Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque stated:

We are actually considering alternative livelihoods for them. There’s a suggestion that they are employed as contact tracers because we do need about 120,000 of them and it’s only about 30,000 employed so far

Jeepney Drivers As Contact Tracers For COVID-19 Suspects?
Image from: ABS-CBN

Currently, the government has employed around 38,000 contact tracers. However, the Worl Health Organizations’ standard number of tracers is at 126,000. With this, there should be 1 contact tracer for every 800 people.

As per the article, the transport group Piston said that around 500,000 jeepney drivers and 200,000 operators were hit by the lockdown. Adding to this, the government began to roll-out the newer model jeepneys.

It’s not on the immediate horizon because it’s almost a physical impossibility to have social distancing when passengers face each other in a jeepney.

There are new modern jeepneys being deployed where the seating arrangement is similar to buses. I understand this kind of modern jeepneys might be deployed sooner than later.

Moreover, Roque emphasized that the deployment of traditional face-to-face jeepneys would be out of the question for now. Also, the spokesperson explained that the country could never get to a point of 100% transportation due to social distancing.

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