The director-general of World Health Organization has stressed the importance of tracing contacts of COVID-19 patients. Dr. Tedros Adhanom in his briefing remark on Monday said contacts tracing can prevent community transmission.
“Mobile applications can support contact tracing, but nothing replaces boots on the ground-trained workers going door-to-door to find cases and contacts, and break the chain of transmission,” Dr. Adhanom said.
Through this method, a contact of COVID-19 patient can be identified, tested, and isolated. Citing Ebola, smallpox and polio as examples, Dr. Adhanom says contact tracing has been effective in the fight against outbreak. He noted that the poorest countries in the world and vulnerable are at higher risk of infection.
According to WHO’s report released on Monday, South Sudan has 2,211 confirmed cases of COVID-19 including 45 deaths. The report indicated that the spread of the virus in South Sudan is through community transmission. Community transmission means infections within the population with unclear source.
There are 34 confirmed cases of COVID-19 including one death in Abyei Administrative Area. The global COVID-19 infections is 14 562 550-out of which 607 781 are deaths, according to WHO’s COVID-19 situation report, July 20th.