MANILA – President Rodrigo Duterte moved to this morning from yesterday his announcement on whether he will grant the request of physicians and concerned citizens in Bacolod City to revert them back to enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) by tomorrow.
The announcement, which was taped from last night’s Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Disease meeting, is set to be aired at 9 a.m. today, said Sen. Christopher “Bong” Go.
Dr. Ma. Ivy V. Malata, president of the Philippine Medical Association–Canlaon Medical Society, wrote a letter to President Duterte on behalf of physicians and concerned citizens in Bacolod to place the city under ECQ for two weeks.
She cited the rapid spike in the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) positive cases with local transmission reaching its highest the past few days.
“We are now the fastest in Western Visayas, and there are hundreds of pending results coming in. Some hospitals have declared full COVID-19 capacity. Numerous healthcare workers and frontliners have been admitted or home-quarantined,” Malata said.
“We would like to appeal to the National IATF for an ECQ for at least two weeks to help us contain the virus, to help the healthcare system recuperate, and to give us time to institute and implement appropriate interventions, especially with the way LSIs and OFWs are being handled,” she added.
Bacolod City, along with Iloilo City, Negros Occidental, Iloilo Province, Guimaras, Capiz, Antique and Aklan were placed under “medium risk” modified general community quarantine until July 31.
Presidential spokesperson Harry Roque has said in a television interview the other day that there will be “major changes” to the country’s pandemic response starting next month.
“Let’s just say that things will not be the same. There will be major changes in our response to the pandemic,” Roque said in an interview with CNN Philippines’ The Source.
“So it is not so much the classification that would matter but the responses,” he added. “The people will now see the difference in the response that we will have. It is now thoroughly invigorated and part of it is the built capacity.”
The announcement of the new quarantine status for the first 15 days of August came a day after the Department of Health (DOH) registered a staggering 38,075 new COVID-19 recoveries last night.
The DOH explained that its massive data harmonization efforts identified 37,166 additional recoveries on top of the 909 newly validated recoveries reported by regional and epidemiological surveillance units for July 30.
“The same reconciliation efforts also explain the 3,954 cases reported today, of which 1,320 cases are fresh cases, and 2,634 are late cases,” the DOH said in a statement last night.
Over 3,000 new recoveries were identified between July 12 and 14, while the DOH data team re-tagged some 5,000 mild and asymptomatic cases as recoveries on July 15.
The Philippines has logged a total of 89,374 COVID-19 cases with 65,078 recoveries and 1,983 deaths. This marks the first time that new cases topped 3,000 and the 16th day in a row during which more than 1,300 new cases were announced./PN
