ILOILO City – Nine residents of Barangay Pali Benedicto in Mandurriao district tested positive for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).
Mayor Jerry Treñas quickly placed 75 households in a neighborhood at the village’s Zone 4 and Zone 5 on a three-day “surgical extreme enhanced community quarantine.”
This stringent measure, according to the mayor, aims to stop the virus from spreading.
“Isa na sila ka compound,” Treñas revealed during a press briefing yesterday.
In his Executive Order 107 that took effect on July 29, Treñas ordered the household to observe the following:
* Refrain from unnecessary travel until the COVID-19 testing and sanitation process have been completed.
* Only Authorized Persons Outside Residence shall be allowed to enter and/or leave the neighborhood, and existing health and safety measures shall be strictly imposed.
* All forms of transportation, both private and public, including the unauthorized movement of person along the street, are restricted.
* The foregoing restriction shall not apply to persons who need immediate hospital care and management
Treñas said the city government will supply food to every household as well as their other needs.
Based on the July 29 data of the Department of Health 6, the Pali Benedicto cases were asymptomatic and currently confined at the city’s quarantine facility.
They were the following:
* WV Patient 1180 – four-year-old male
* WV Patient 1181 – 23-year-old male
* WV Patient 1182 – 15-year-old male
* WV Patient 1183 – 12-year-old male
* WV Patient 1184 – 18-year-old female
* WV Patient 1185 – 60-year-old female
* WV Patient 1186 – 25-year-old male
* WV Patient 1187 – 27-year-old male
* WV Patient 1188 – 27-year-old female
These cases were part of the 50 additional cases that DOH-6 confirmed Wednesday and brought to 1,208 the total cases in Western Visayas.
According to Pali Benedicto village chief Alan Juarez Ginsugi, the patients reside in the same compound where a 50-year-old man first tested positive for the viral illness on July 21.
He said at least 40 individuals living in the neighborhood had their specimen collected on July 27 as part of the city government’s contact tracing.
Their results came out the next day, July 18, where nine individuals were found infected – now the neighborhood’s latest cases, Ginsugi added.
Personnel of the City Health Office has been expanding contract tracing since yesterday. They have yet to determine, as of this writing, the source of infection of the 50-year-old patient, who possibly infected the nine others./PN
