BY MATÉ ESPINA
THE BATTLE in the streets to contain COVID-19 in Bacolod City has become more complicated and may just become a battle in the courts.
This following reports that there are positive patients who are refusing to be removed from their homes and be transferred to government quarantine facilities. Some are threatening legal actions against quarantine teams if they will be forcefully taken from their homes.
The problem stems from the order of National Inter-Agency Task Force (NIATF) chair, Secretary Carlito Galvez, to ban home quarantine when Bacolod was placed under modified enhanced community quarantine (MECQ). Prior to this order, local officials were following the Department of Health (DOH) protocol allowing home quarantine when the asymptomatic patient can provide evidence that self-isolation is possible, such as your own room with bathroom and isolated from other household members.
However, when Galvez came into the picture, the new protocols followed what was implemented in Cebu and allegedly, among these is banning home quarantine.
It would not have been a big issue if quarantine facilities here are well-equipped and at least decent enough to house the positives. However, pictures circulating in social media on the conditions of the facilities triggered defiance among those who resulted positives recently.
There are reports that as many as four to six persons share a classroom with just dividers between them. Personally, I can understand their anxiety because the thought of sleeping with strangers is scaring me too. In addition, all patients in one floor share a common bathroom, conditions of which is best left unsaid.
I suspect many who are defying the quarantine order come from the middle and upper class who cannot fathom the idea of staying in a crowded facility when they are better off being lockdown at home.
Councilor Renecito Novero, a lawyer himself and in charge of the quarantine facilities, said in a radio interview yesterday that there are different interpretations of the law but from his point of view those who are not cooperative or unresponsive to the measures imposed by the government are liable to be penalized.
“Anyone who blatantly refuses to cooperate is committing a crime and subject to arrest,” Novero said, adding that there is a law that clearly lists down prohibitive acts under a public health crisis that can be cited.
Novero said conditions today is akin to “tiempo guerra” and as such “government is not tasked to provide convenience and comfort, but safety.”
Novero has a point because after all, this is a health crisis and Bacolod’s cases are just climbing each day. We now have a total of 3,260 cases, and almost 2,000 of these were reported in the month of September alone. Although the city government said it’s less than 1 percent of the population, 42 percent of the total cases are “active” while 50 have died.
Of course there are many grey areas in the law and those who can afford to battle it out can bring this issue all the way to the Supreme Court.
Novero himself admitted that the positives have their basic constitutional rights to oppose the act of forcefully extracting them from their homes. To use force is coercive, but it is what it is, especially when you have generals at the helm of containing the situation.
The councilor, however, said that he believes that during these times, “police power must prevail because we are not just looking at the welfare of one individual or family but at a much bigger picture.”
There are concessions being made as the city government are conducting negotiations with some establishments including religious-owned retreat homes to be used as quarantine facilities for paying patients.
Go Hotel is the first to agree to this set-up and charges P1,250 per day for room alone or P1,700 for full board. Negros Press Club President, Glazyl Masculino is in that facility but hopes to be released after five days only since she received her positive test results 9 days after she was swabbed.
If we can have more private establishments converted into quarantine facilities, it may ease the tension of quarantine woes and will also help decongest hospitals which reportedly has become a sanctuary for those who can afford to pay to avoid getting quarantined in schools.
The continuing surge of cases in Bacolod has also highlighted the question of whether a “slow-down” or a semi-lockdown is actually effective to curb the spread. Many have turned to social media to question the efficacy of locking people in when new cases are still at triple digits.
Last Sunday alone, of the 323 new cases in the region, more than half of these or 186 cases come from Bacolod.
As early as now, both the city government and the Province of Negros Occidental issued advisory to ban visits to cemeteries from Oct. 29 to Nov. 2. Bacolod Mayor Bing Leonardia also issued a separate order cancelling the MassKara Festival which falls on the month of October.
We are on MECQ till the end of September but from the looks of it, we are in for a much longer haul./PN
