BY DOMINIQUE GABRIEL BAÑAGA
BACOLOD City – Local authorities in Negros Occidental are having a hard time managing the arrival of locally stranded individuals (LSIs) and returning overseas Filipinos (ROFs) into the province.
Gov. Eugenio Jose Lacson acknowledged that local government units across the province are still scrambling to receive hundreds of repatriates stranded in Manila, who were sent home by the national government.
He once again requested the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF-EID) to enforce a weeklong travel moratorium for LSIs and ROFs.
Lacson initially wrote Juan Jovian Ingeniero, director of the IATF-EID in Western Visayas, to suspend new arrivals from Oct. 1 to 7 to give time for them to decongest, disinfect and prepare the province’s quarantine facilities.
As of Sept. 22, the province has a total of 2,713 confirmed coronavirus disease 2019 cases.
Under the provincial government’s protocols, all arriving LSIs and OFWs are required to undergo quarantine while awaiting the results of their reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction test./PN
