The Ilocos region has welcomed an increasing number of visitors and tourists since September this year and is now bracing for an influx of more tourists as the quarantine restriction has been relaxed by the IATF to Alert Level 2 this November, along with Metro Manila and other regions.
Because of the change in quarantine restrictions and greater movement of people has been allowed, like in any other major municipalities, the region developed and implemented their own contact tracing management system.
This contact tracing system has been in place since last year as the Department of Science and Technology Region I (DOST-I), through the Information Technology Service and Management (ITSM) Unit, designed, developed and implemented it to aid in the conduct of contact tracing in the entire region that includes La Union, Ilocos Sur, Ilocos Norte and Pangasinan.
To provide convenience to domestic travelers, the mobile app called FastPass serves as contact tracing system to allow individual’s proper documentation, to filter health status and manage border control by using the QR code to fill out the necessary information particularly on health declaration and check-list.
The program is integrated in the local information system called CovidDETECT that was derived from the acronym, Covid Detection and Reporting of Exposed Individuals Through Efficient Contact Tracing. This is a management information system that records individuals’ movement and tracing Covid 19-cases and its close contact that are stored in a database that includes personal information, health and medical details, and travel history.
Furthermore, this is used for monitoring and decision making in declaring the region’s status and is intended to provide a source of information through its on-line dashboard.
For now, the improvement in the system is on-going as the team behind this project is consistently maintaining the system for the enhancement of the program. This initiative is being managed by Michael John Maquiling, as the head, and his team. — Ryan Sebastian Soyosa (DOST-STII, S&T Media Service)
