Duterte to announce quarantine status on June 15

President Rodrigo Duterte will make the announcement on the quarantine status of the different areas in the country on Monday, June 15. (File)

CEBU CITY, Philippines — Questions about whether Cebu City will continue to be under general community quarantine or if Cebu province’s appeal to “move on” to a modified GCQ will be granted will be answered on Monday, June 15, 2020, as President Rodrigo Duterte will announce the community quarantine status of the different areas in the country moving forward.

Secretary Carlito Galvez Jr., National Task Force on COVID-19 chief implementer, said the Inter-Agency Task Force had yet to meet also on Monday to tackle on the recommended quarantine control for each local government unit and that the final say would still be coming from the President.

Read more: More symptomatic patients among new COVID cases

However, Galvez, who is now on a two-day visit in Cebu to evaluate the coronavirus disease situation here, said he had noted a “good health care response” made by the medical facilities here despite the steady increase in the number of confirmed cases in Cebu within the past five days.

“We have to understand whether this is a new data or mga backlogs… Nakita namin dito na the rate of death is still very manageable at the same time yong mga current cases ay talagang medyo tumataas pero marami pa rin ang asymptomatic o di kaya ay mild cases,” Galvez said.

(We have to understand whether this is a new data or backlogs … We saw that the rate of death is still very manageable, and at the same time the current cases have increased slightly but many of those cases are still asymptomatic or they are just mild cases.)

Dr. Jaime Bernadas, Department of Health in Central Visayas (DOH-7) regional director, earlier said that the recent cases logged could not be considered as a “spike” as these specimens were supposedly from the backlog of swab samples that were collected within the past two weeks yet.

Galvez said he had yet to visit and look into the situation in the hospitals here as the DOH-7 noted that there had been an increase in the number of symptomatic patients among the new recorded cases here.

READ: Galvez: ‘High chance’ for Cebu province’s appeal for MGCQ

For the case of the province, Galvez said there was a high chance that the Capitol’s appeal to transition to MGCQ would get a nod from the IATF, considering the granular data of the COVID-19 cases in its component towns.

“If we look at the granular data, nakita po natin na yong provincial government…mostly nasa green area…Kapag bumaba po tayo sa granular data, titingnan natin by barangay na mga affected, makikita po natin na malaki ang chansa na maipasa po sa IATF,” Galvez added.

(If we look at the granular data, we can see that the provincial government … mostly in the green area … and if we go lower from the granular data, we will see the barangay affected and we saw that there is a big chance that (the province’s appeal for an MGCQ) we can pass this at IATF.)/dbs