THEY are called Covid detectives in South Korea. Here, we call them simply contact tracers to highlight their work of detecting, tracing and isolating persons, who come into close contact with a Covid-positive person.

The government and the nation should pause a moment and reflect on the implications of the announcement yesterday by Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) Secretary Eduardo Año that the DILG would be hiring, starting yesterday, 50,000 new contact tracers, following President Duterte’s signing into law of the Bayanihan 2 statute.