BACOLOD City – Mayor Evelio Leonardia wants this highly-urbanized city classified under the lenient modified general community quarantine (MGCQ) next month.
Yesterday, the mayor wrote Health Secretary Francisco Duque III appealing to de-escalate the metro’s community quarantine status from general community quarantine to MGCQ for the entire month of December.
Duque is also the chair of the national government’s Inter-Agency Task Force for Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF-EID). He is expected to present to President Rodridgo Duterte the task force’s latest resolution for quarantine classifications of areas in the country on Monday, Nov. 30.
The IATF-EID’s quarantine status recommendations, however, were not yet disclosed to the public as of this writing.
In his appeal, Leonardia pointed out that “Bacolod City has met all the criteria for de-escalation.”
The mayor touted the declining number of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) cases for the past two weeks.
“As of Nov. 24, there are 258 active COVID-19 cases out of 5,294 accumulated cases. The total number of recoveries has reached 4,875 or 92.08 percent, which correlates to good management and treatment of COVID-19 cases,” Leonardia said.
He added that the two-week growth rate of COVID-19 cases is 24.6 percent, while the average daily attack rate is down to 2.96 percent from 5.32 percent two weeks ago.
“We have successfully implemented a COVID-19 surveillance testing in our three major public markets and slaughterhouse, Barangay Health Emergency Response Teams, workers in the food industry, and city government employees serving as frontliners,” Leonardia said.
Surveillance testing is a continuing effort of the city’s Emergency Operations Center with scheduled testing on Nov. 28 to 30, targeting the transport sector and food delivery services.
The city government also launched the Bacolod City Contact Tracing System or BaCTrac, a localized web and mobile application, enacted through City Ordinance No. 941.
With these measures in place, Leonardia said Bacolod is ready to transition to MGCQ and reopen the local economy after an extended lull./PN