Be careful who comes to your parties, Mayor Sara tells Dabawenyos
DAVAO CITY – Mayor Sara Duterte has bared that a patient in this city reportedly got infected with the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) after attending a party in Calinan District, which may have had been attended by persons who were not from the same household.
In her interview over Davao City Disaster Radio (DCDR 87.5), Duterte said, while Dabawenyos were not prohibited from holding modest celebrations, she was advising them not to invite relatives, friends, and neighbors who live from other households to their residences.
The mayor did not elaborate if the COVID-19 patient was still an active case.
“Do you know that we have positive patient who got infected after attending a party in Calinan? Do you know it or not? We have a patient, based on case history, had attended a party in Calinan,” she said.
Duterte said it was not yet the proper time to hold extravagant parties, and invite other people to come over to their places since they risk contracting the coronavirus.
She asked the people to practice precautionary measures such as celebrating special occasions among themselves within the same household.
“The question is: Can you hold parties? Yes, you can hold parties inside your homes, and with people who live with you in your residences.
She said parties would fall under the classification of “leisure,” activities that are prohibited by the COVID-19 Interagency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases.
According to the Department of HealthDavao, there has been 529 total COVID-19 positives in Davao Region, corresponding to 411 in Davao City, 43 in Davao del Norte, 21 in Davao del Sur, 26 in Davao de Oro, 24 in Davao Oriental, and four in Davao Occidental, as of June 29.
Last April 2020, Duterte released Executive Order 25 released, declaring April 17 to December 31, 2020, a period of mourning and vigilance, which prohibited extravagant celebrations here as the global deaths due to the highly infectious COVID19 continued to rise.
In her EO, the city and national government celebrations, parties, anniversaries, and festivities shall be cancelled; commemoration of important dates and legal holidays should be kept short and must be in somber tone; all barangays shall refrain from extravagant celebration of their fiesta while all founding anniversaries/ araw ng barangay celebrations will be cancelled.
It added private parties to mark personal or family milestones should be kept low key and modest, meaning a celebration in a public place with no more than 25 guests, while those who want to pursue big celebrations can do so next year.
The private sector is likewise advised to adhere to the requirements, recommending a food distribution, feeding program or financial assistance to their employees in place of grandiose celebrations to mark their important events, it said.
Duterte warned the local government would take legal actions such as Article 25 of the Civil Code, which provides “thoughtless extravagance in expenses for pleasure or display during a period of acute public want or emergency may be stopped by order of the courts at the instance of any government or private charitable institution.”
“Even without the ‘mourning’ (EO 25), we would reach a point wherein there would still be no celebrations because that would be the basic requirement of the doctors that there should be no mass gathering. It is during mass gatherings that the virus can find the opportunity to spread,” she said.