Garcia slams lockdown plan on entire province

Cebu governor Gwendolyn Garcia has expressed her opposition to an apparent plan to place the province on lockdown.

Recently, the governor has also disclosed that there are “money-making” schemes in Covid responses.

“My message is don’t mess with us. We can take care of ourselves. I will not and never again accept a lockdown. I will fight for Cebu and the Cebuanos because Cebu is moving on and moving forward,” Garcia stressed.

As she slammed three doctors, who recommended to Department of Health (DoH) Secretary Francisco Duque III to place Cebu on lockdown after Covid-19 mutations were detected.

I will not and never again accept a lockdown.

According to her, one of the consultant-doctors even allegedly said that Cebuanos shouldn’t be allowed to go out of the island.

With this, Garcia insisted that the recommendation is discriminative of Cebuanos and unnecessary as the mutation is yet to be studied.

The governor insisted that using mutations as a reason to place Cebu on lockdown is a scheme to further malign the reputation of the province, especially when Cebu recently opened its doors to more visitors.

She noted that a lockdown would cripple Cebu’s economy, which is still struggling after the long quarantine in 2020.

Meanwhile, DoH-7 regional director Dr. Jaime Bernadas said the detection of new mutations does not affect the current protocols set in the province under the modified general community quarantine or MGCQ.

Duque and the DoH-7 reportedly declined the recommendation to place on lockdown the province as Cebu’s situation remains manageable as the critical care utilization rate for hospitals remains low.