27 out of 80 barangays in Cebu City have COVID-19 cases

By: Delta Dyrecka Letigio - 5 years ago

Barangay Luz in Cebu City leads the entire region in the number of COVID-19 positive cases. The densely-populated barangay has reported 82 new cases on Friday, April 17, 2020. | Photo courtesy of Cebu City PIO

CEBU CITY, Philippines — The number of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) cases in Cebu City keeps rising daily as new cases are found out and recorded every single day.

The city has now 760 cases of the virus in 27 of its barangays, or at least 33 percent of the total 80 barangays.

LOOK: Here is a breakdown of the 30 new COVID-19 cases in Cebu City

Mayor Edgardo Labella said this was due to the city’s capability to conduct massive testings in areas affected by the virus with the help of contact tracing.

The Cebu City Health has conducted at least 1,000 swabs in April 2020 alone since the first recorded cases were revealed by the Department of Health (DOH).

The cases have been concentrated in Barangays Luz, Labangon, and Mambaling. Yet, other barangays are not free of the virus with isolated and growing number of cases in certain sitios.

The city remains to be in the enhanced community quarantine and will remain in it until May 15, 2020. Three barangays — Luz, Labangon, and Guadalupe are in total lockdown.

The mayor has not concretely responded to queries over the past month whether Cebu City should be placed under total lockdown.

Only 19 barangay isolation centers have been established for all eighty barangays.

Labangon Barangay Captain Victor Buendia has repeatedly sought the help of the city government to find more isolation places for their asymptomatic patients.

He said in previous statements that the Labangon Elementary School was not enough for the rising cases in their barangay.

In response, the city government has increased the number of beds in the school from the previous 50 to 125.

Meanwhile, Mambaling Barangay Captain Gines Abellana refuses to place his barangay under lockdown despite the more than 30 cases in the area.

He said the barangay did not have the capability to feed its 40,000 families should a total lockdown be set in place.

Barangay Inayawan, for its part, had to close its public market, cutting off a source of income to over 50 vendors after the husband of a vendor was found positive of the virus.

With the rising cases in Luz, space simply could not catch up. The City Council decried the failure of the city government to isolate all 193 cases as the Barrio Luz National High School only had an 80-bed capacity.

The council encouraged the City Health Department to immediately isolate the patients and not leave them in home quarantine.

Councilor David Tumulak, for his part, said there was enough space for all COVID-19 patients in the city once all BICs were set up.

“Yes we have enough space, schools man ang gipanggamit. Dili sayon ang pag install og BIC (Yes, we have enough space because schools are being used. It is not easy to install BICs),” said Tumulak.

For Councilor Eduardo Rama, Jr., this is enough. He questioned during a special session on Friday, May 1, 2020, whether the city could isolate all those who would prove positive to the mass testings to be done starting May 4.

He said should majority of the 23,000 individuals who would undergo rapid antibody tests would prove positive to the virus, the city might not be ready to face this grave situation.

“Asa man na nato sila ibutang? (Where will we place them?)” said Rama.

With this, the City Council encouraged Mayor Labella and the rest of the executive department to create a concrete plan of action over how the city plans to recover from the COVID-19 crisis.

They asked an appraisal on the blueprint of the Balik Buhay project that would begin on May 4 starting with the mass testing.

“We don’t seem to have a plan how to get out of this crisis. We need a concrete plan,” said Councilor Nestor Archival./dbs