ILOILO City – The city government is appealing for a de-escalated alert level from the current Level 2 to allow the opening of more economic activities.
Mayor Jerry Treñas, in his letter of urgent appeal dated March 8, said Iloilo City’s 2.21 percent case fatality rate (CFR) is second to Aklan’s 1.6 percent, which has the lowest CFR among provinces and highly urbanized cities in Western Visayas as of March 6.
Aklan is currently under Alert Level 1 classification.
Further, he said, the city recorded a “drastic decrease” in the number of cases, from the previous 1,113 cases in the recent two weeks down to 276 as of March 7.
“With tight surveillance, stringent implementation of health protocols, massive RT-PCR (reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction) testing, swift isolation of close contacts with concomitant disinfection, the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID)-19 infection in Iloilo City has dramatically decreased. This significant data must be given preferential attention and considerable weight to merit the de-escalation of our alert level status to Level 1,” Treñas said.
The letter of appeal was addressed to National Task Force (NTF) Against COVID-19 chief Secretary Delfin Lorenzana, National Task Force chief implementer Carlito Galvez Jr., Health Secretary Francisco Duque III and Interior and Local Government Secretary Eduardo Año through Undersecretary Epimaco Densing III and the National Inter-Agency Task Force on the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases through their regional counterparts.
In the appeal, the mayor said the healthcare utilization rate (HCUR) of the city as of March 6 was at 45.56 percent, while it is also poised to open another 76-bed capacity modular hospital.
The HCUR is affected by factors that could not be attributed to its capacity to augment health services, he said.
“Hospitals and health care units in Iloilo City, which is the regional capital of Western Visayas, are not only catering residents. Considering that most of the hospitals are referral hospitals, a significant portion of the admitted patients with severe medical cases, are those coming from nearby provinces and cities,” Treñas said.
He argued that the current Alert Level 2 classification still prevents certain industries from operating as well as activities are limited.
“Business owners and workers alike are constantly requesting for the city government’s humanitarian consideration in allowing more activities to take place but seeing that we are bound to follow the classification assigned by the IATF-EID, we are left with no choice but to echo their plea for due cogitation,” Treñas added. (PNA)
