Lawmaker passes 4 bills to help enhance fight vs virus

A LEGISLATOR has passed four resolutions requesting City Hall to pay for more medical facilities to enhance the capacity of the local government to control the spread of COVID-19.

On Friday, the Sangguniang Panlungsod conducted an emergency session to address the threat of the coronavirus.

Councilor Pamela Librado-Morata, committee chair on labor and employment opportunities, passed four resolutions under suspended rules in support of the efforts of the city to protect its people from the highly contagious disease.

Morata passed a resolution urging the City Mayor’s Office (CMO) to provide a budget for massive testing for COVID-19,

especially among frontliners.

In a statement, she said that the health workers and law enforcers must ensure that they are also safe from the threat of the virus.

“As of now, we really need to ensure that we can give our 100 percent support (to the city) through financial, equipment, and other resources,” she said.

“This is for all our medical frontliners, workers, elderly, urban poor families, vendors, and drivers. No sector or Davaoenos should be left behind in the initiatives of the city government. We have to be decisive and focus more on how we can increase the capacity of the health sector in the city,” she said.

She also passed a resolution requesting the CMO to provide a budget for installing sanitary tents in various strategic areas or locations in the city, “such as but not limited to parks, hospitals, public markets, roads, streets and other public places.”

The sanitation tents will help mitigate the risk and transmission of COVID-19, as there has been an increasing number of persons under monitoring and persons under investigation in Davao Region.

“We can also invest in sanitation tents to ensure that the virus will not spread to hospitals or to public places,” she said.

She has also requested CMO to extend its assistance by way of purchasing additional Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) machine/s to further enhance the Southern Philippines Medical Center’s (SPMC) diagnostic capacity for COVID-19 testing.

“We need to help SPMC because if the worst happens, we will be affected also. SPMC caters to a lot of patients since its service is Mindanaowide. There are still steps or measures that the local government can do to increase the capacity of SPMC as a Mindanao-wide regional hospital, especially amid the fight against Covid-19,” she said.

She also is concerned about those PUIs who have died while waiting for their test results.

“I am saddened by the news that there are PUIs who have died while waiting for their laboratory results because we still are not capacitated with testing kits and enough PCR machines to confirm cases. If we have already acquired PCR machines and test kits, we can then conduct massive testing,” she added.

A resolution was also passed by Morata requesting the CMO to provide a budget for the creation of a city-owned molecular laboratory with PCR machines, which has a diagnostic capacity to test for COVID-19.

“We have no doubt that Davao City can be among the most effective LGUs in this fight against a global pandemic,” she said.