Davao City to keep tabs on all incoming visitors through PIS
DAVAO CITY—ALL persons coming into this city would be required to fill up personal information sheets (PIS) at the airport and border checkpoints to allow authorities a quick contact tracing in case of an infection, City Mayor Sara Duterte-carpio said.
The move is part of a string of options the city and the Regional Task Force on Corona Virus Disease 2019 is taking ahead of the resumption of normal airport operations in the country, even as the city expressed its apprehension over the possible spread of the contagion amid reports of still uncontained transmission in Metro Manila.
The personal information data sheet is expected to be covered by a city ordinance and Duterte-carpio said this would be tedious and to cause long queues but would be implemented still. This was already implemented last month in the three border checkpoints.
She said the city, as the central entry point for all air travelers to any destinations in the Davao region, would be likely compelled to open its airport once the national government would lift air travel. The mayor said the regional task force would exercise its option, though, to petition the national government to exempt the opening of the Davao airport.
The region has already posted encouraging trend in containing the spread of the Covid-19 infection, with a growing number of recoveries from infection, at 50, and a downtrend in admitted patients. The regional Department of Health (DOH) has reported no new cases in Covid-19 positive patients and no new deaths over the weekend.
The Southern Philippines Medical
Center (SPMC) has already conducted 1,908 sampling and testing of Covid-19 patients, which only turned out 103 positives, a slim 5.04 percent. Dr. Leopoldo Vega, SPMC chief of hospital, said 41 patients of the 74 admitted patients in the hospital and monitored centers, have recovered. Of 300 SPMC health personnel, 12 have been found positive but only two have remained admitted and the rest have been discharged, or still undergoing quarantine “but they have only mild symptoms.”
After the SPMC was granted independent status to conduct the test, it has conducted the second-highest testing in the laboratory second only to the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine, the main laboratory located in Muntinlupa, Rizal.
While the Davao region has accumulated a total of 1,066 suspected (formerly labeled persons under investigation) patients, only 90 turned positive and currently admitted at the SPMC and Davao Regional Medical Center in Tagum City, Davao del Norte.
Of the 23,625 suspected (or persons under monitoring) patients, 14,117 have been cleared, or 63 percent, Dr. Lenny Joy Rivera, assistant DOH director, said.
“We want a steady compliance of the protocols to avoid a surge in the infection,” Rivera said.
Duterte-carpio said it would still be up to the doctors to make the decision on what to do next after the ECQ expires on Sunday.
Vega said they may recommend a gradual lifting of the stringent protocols if the trend of zero positives and admitted patients would continue. “We have to maintain the basic and important things like physical distancing, avoid crowds and change your lifestyles now.”