12 Cebu City villages face lockdown
THE Regional Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF-EID) plans to place 12 barangay (villages) in Cebu City under hard lockdown to contain the rise of coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) cases in Central Visayas’ premier metropolis.
Environment Secretary Roy Cimatu, concurrent deputy implementer of the IATF- EID for the Visayas, said he would ask the chief executives of the barangay to explain the surge of Covid- 19 cases in their communities. “What happened; what did you do? They have a very big responsibility. I will be talking to them later at pakita ko sa kanila kung gaano kahalaga ang pagiging (I will show them
how important it is to be a) Barangay Captain,” Cimatu told reporters in a virtual media briefing Thursday.
The villages to be locked down are Sambag I and II, Kamputhaw, Basak San Nicolas, Duljo Fatima, Tisa, Ermita, Guadalupe, Tinago, Mabolo, Lahug, and Tejero.
Cebu City has reverted to the enhanced community quarantine after its Covid-19 case count spiked.
Cebu reported 5,088 Covid-19 cases, higher than that in the cities of Manila and Quezon in the National Capital Region (Metro Manila).
As of Wednesday, the Philippines had logged 32, 295 Covid-19 cases. Of the total, 1,204 died while 8,656 others recovered, according to the Department of Health (DoH).
LtGen. Guillermo Eleazar, who heads Joint Task Force Covid Shield, said two companies of the Special Action Force (SAF) composed of 150 officers would be deployed to Cebu City to assist in enforcing quarantine protocols.
Eleazar said the deployment of SAF commandos was necessary to compel local residents to follow quarantine rules.
“Mobility assets of SAF will also be deployed in Cebu City that include MultiPurpose Armored Vehicles similar to what we used in the implementation of ECQ in Metro Manila,” Eleazar said.
Interior Secretary Eduardo Año noted that people in Cebu City were still going out of their homes, not wearing face masks and ignoring the physical distancing rule.
Since June 15, almost 2,000 quarantine violators have been apprehended in Cebu City.
Cebu City Mayor Edgardo Labella said his administration was prepared to implement stricter measures, including the cancellation of quarantine passes.
“[We will implement] a more selective issuance of quarantine pass. We have to see to it that one pass will be provided for each household” Labella said.
The city plans to separate quarantine pass holders into clusters, where only a specified cluster can go out and buy items on alternate days.
Dr. Jaime Bernadas, DoH regional director for Region 7 (Central Visayas), said they found a way to decongest private hospitals for Covid-19 patients by transferring mild and moderate cases to government hospitals and quarantine facilities not yet filled to capacity.
He said four Covid-19 infirmaries have been built, including the 48-bed Sacred Heart Facility and the 130-bed International Eucharistic Congress convention center.
“It’s a matter of strengthening the coordination between the private hospitals and the operation center, we are trying to respond accordingly and adding more deployment to the private hospitals,” Bernadas said.
The DoH has sent 1,000 more test kits to the region, according to Labella.
Bernadas said they were not preventing people to do “tu-ob” or steam inhalation, but this was not promoted as a “possible cure” for Covid-19.
Also on Thursday, Año approved the recommendation to suspend the travel of locally stranded individuals (LSIs) to Region 8 (Eastern Visayas).
The suspension will last for 14 days. During that period, the Department of the Interior and Local Government will gather all stranded travelers to be checked for coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) infection, he said.
Año said the local officials in Eastern Visayas recommended the suspension of the travel of locally stranded individuals ( LSIs) to stem the mounting number Covid-19 cases in their areas.
There are 431 Covid-19 cases in the region with 392 of them requiring hospital confinement, he said.
Among the infected are 80 doctors and nurses.
Año blamed the surge on LSIs and returning overseas Filipino workers.
A total of 218 LSIs who arrived in the region tested positive for Covid-19.
Virus cases to peak
Meanwhile, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday (Thursday in Manila) it expected coronavirus cases to hit 10 million worldwide in the next week.
“In the first month of this outbreak, less than 10,000 cases were reported to WHO. In the last month, almost 4 million cases have been reported,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a virtual press conference. “We expect to reach a total of 10 million cases within the next week.
“This is a sober reminder that even as we continue research into vaccines and therapeutics, we have an urgent responsibility to do everything we can with the tools we have now to suppress transmission and save lives.”
The novel coronavirus has killed at least 477,500 people and infected nearly 9.3 million since emerging in China last December, according to a tally from official sources compiled by Agence France-Presse.
WHO emergencies director Michael Ryan warned that the virus was still raging in the Americas and needed a very aggressive response from governments to suppress the spread.
“The epidemic in the Americas, in general, is still intense. It’s particularly intense in Central and South America,” he said.
“We’ve seen a steady and worrying continuation of trend, with many countries experiencing between 25-percent and 50-percent rise in cases over the last week.
“Unfortunately, the pandemic for many countries in the Americas has not peaked,” he said, and was “likely to result in a sustained number of cases and continued deaths in the coming weeks.”