DoH identifies priority QC, CALABARZON barangays

We are going to go on the ground and we are going at the local government level so that people will feel that the DoH is there

The Department of Health (DoH) on Wednesday said that ‘priority barangays’ in Metro Manila and in CALABARZON have been identified for house-to-house protocol of detecting COVID-19 cases.

So now we are going to have the strategic lockdown. There will be lockdowns even in the street, even in a building, workplace it doesn’t have to be a lockdown for the whole city or municipality.

Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said that the initiative is part of the strategies under the Coordinated Operations to Defeat the pandemic (CODE) where officials will be assisting local government units.

“We are going to go on the ground and we are going at the local government level so that people will feel that the DoH is there,” she said in an online forum.

Vergeire said that each household will be symptom-checked where suspects and probable cases who if found not following the guidelines under the home-quarantine will be sent to treatment facilities.

“We will not wait for them to come to the system, we will find them,” she said.

She added that each member found with symptoms will be contact traced as the swab testing will also follow even for those found to be in close contact.

Ideally, the government is targeting to identify 37 individuals in contact with the patient.

Meanwhile, Vergeire said that the CODE strategy will also allow for the strict enforcement of localized lockdown if cases increase in the area.

She said that upon investigation, not all units were found complying with the guidelines.

“There were gaps in the implementation and as we observe in the rise of cases, there were certain localities that were not able to enforce lockdown adequately,” she said.

“So now we are going to have the strategic lockdown. There will be lockdowns even in the street, even in a building, workplace it doesn’t have to be a lockdown for the whole city or municipality,” she also added.

In addition, the strategy will also be an avenue to provide more granular data among barangays as she said that full information is targeted to finish within the following week.

In a meeting, Vergeire said that both officials and the medical community have agreed on the seven-point strategy as a revised plan imposed within the two-week lockdown in response to their plea on Saturday.