Contact tracing is an essential component of public health response to the Covid-19 pandemic and aims to prevent onward transmission of the virus, in which health care workers are on the frontline taking the lead of this action. This study utilized a descriptive research design to determine the perceived facilitators and barriers to contact tracing during the Covid-19 pandemic by the health care workers of Lanao del Sur and sought their recommendation in improving contact tracing through the use of an online survey and an interview. A total of 31 health care workers participated in this study each representing a designated area in Lanao del Sur. This study generated four (4) themes with eight (8) sub-themes for facilitators while five (5) themes with seven ((7) sub-themes for barriers. The themes for facilitators are the following: active inter-agency collective responsibility, socially responsive community, competent health care workers, and additional human resources. On the other hand, the barriers identified are the following: socio-cultural threats, stigma, poor inter-agency collective responsibility, inconsistent protocol, and poor network communication. The study extracted nine (9) recommendations from the health care workers, as follows: Implementation of the QR code mobile contact tracing, improvement of inter-agency efficiency, human resources knowledge and skills development, staff support availability, improve/strengthen information campaign on Covid-19, strengthen community involvement in combating Covid-19, increase salary compensation, improve logistics, and psychosocial support. The results of this study lead us to a notion that there is so much more to improve and r the involvement of different stakeholders in the development of contact tracing systems as well as evaluation and quality assurance in order to create and reinforce the perception of the system as rigorous and reliable are recommended.

Keyword: Facilitators and barriers to contact tracing During COVID-19 pandemic