) – January 3, 2021 – 12:00am
CEBU, Philippines — Cebu City ended 2020 with a double-digit increase in new cases.
The increase in the last four days was somehow attributed to the holiday season.
Data of the Department of Health showed 128 active cases, including 11 new ones.
Majority of the COVID-19 positive are isolated at the NOAH Complex, and 13 in different hospitals.
The city’s Emergency Operations Center (EOC) also reported a slim margin between household and outdoor transmissions.
From December 18 to 31, 2020, EOC reported 45.91 percent of household transmission.
Outside transmission, on the other hand, was at 54.08 percent.
Workplaces remain the highest source of outside transmission at 37.73 percent.
Transmission due to social gathering increased to 18.86 percent, something that had already been anticipated due to the Christmas season.
Other sources of transmission included travelers (either locally stranded individuals, authorized persons outside residences and returning Filipinos), exposure to a COVIDF-19 probable, prison facility, malls, hospitals, eateries, funeral parlors, and tourist destinations.
Cebu City had 10,832 total confirmed cases and 690 deaths in 2020.
At present, 47 barangays are free from COVID-19. They have had no active cases in the last weeks.
Cebu City has 80 barangays.
COVID vaccine
Meanwhile, Associated Labor Unions (ALU) and Partido Manggagawa (PM)-Cebu said workers should also be prioritized for COVID-19 vaccinations.
ALU spokesperson Alan Tanjusay said workers should be among the priority recipients of the vaccine.
“But we argue that the workers must be vaccinized with legal, safe and FDA-approved and affordable vaccines,” Tanjusay told The FREEMAN.
If workers would not be prioritized, he said, their lives and jobs would be put in peril.
This would also result in another sharp economic downturn, he added.
The government’s priorities for coronavirus vaccinations are doctors, nurses, medical experts, soldiers and policemen.
PM-Cebu spokesperson Dennis Derige echoed Tanjusay’s statement.
“As frontliners in opening the economy, workers are primarily at risk of being infected by the virus.”
“Since there is no mass testing among the workers, at least there must be a mass vaccination among the workers especially the frontliners,” he said.
He said the economy is in a “sharp recession due to the authoritarian response of the Duterte administration to the pandemic, which it treated as a peace and order issue instead of a public health concern.”
“The economy will not be recovering soon with the government fumbling vaccine procurement with “kick-vaccs” as a motive,” he said.
Tanjusay said investors are shifting to other countries like Vietnam, Indonesia and Malaysia for better mobility, logistics and higher production.
“These countries are managing the pandemic much better than we do,” he said.
“This may get worse if Filipinos, particularly the workers, have no access to safe and effective vaccines quickly and other countries in the region have already vaccinized their workforce,” he added. — Mitchelle L. Palaubsanon, KQD (FREEMAN)