Rain clouds hover over parts of Cebu City in this photo taken by Jieno Rivera on October 7, 2020.
CEBU CITY, Philippines — A surprise turn of events in the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) situation for Cebu City came on Saturday, November 14, 2020, when the new cases suddenly rose to 59 as per the Department of Health in Central Visayas (DOH-7) data.
This after the city celebrated more than two months of a plateau in the number of new cases placing the city in a more relaxed Modified General Community Quarantine (MGCQ).
However, a rising trend in the new cases has been observed in the past seven days with the city recording two-digit cases daily, topping off with 59 cases on November 14, 2020.
This huge jump in the daily new cases raised the active cases in the city to 262, from less than 200 cases seven days ago.
Outside transmission has been tagged as the culprit, which reached 88 percent in the last seven days, with most of the transmissions happening in the workplace.
The rising trend has been predicted early on by the Emergency Operations Center (EOC), which announced on November 12, 2020, that if the cases continue to rise, lockdowns may be imposed again in the city.
Mayor Edgardo Labella said the final say on the lockdown will be his, but he will be asking for the recommendations of the health and law enforcement agencies.
The Interagency Task Force (IATF) is yet to weigh on the possible decision although the DOH already released a recent statement that a return to the Enhanced Community Quarantine (ECQ) is not yet necessary as the critical utilization rate for hospitals is still at a stable rate.
With the 59 new cases, the EOC is set to conduct an emergency meeting on Sunday, November 15, 2020, to discuss the interventions needed to control the surge.
On Saturday, the police and the EOC already agreed to impose stringent measures on seaports and airports for all arriving passengers to Cebu City to ensure that they are properly quarantined and monitored.
The city government is expected to provide updates to the public on Sunday.
Meanwhile, the two other highly urbanized cities in Metro Cebu also saw a rise in the number of new cases with Lapu-Lapu City recording 30 new cases and Mandaue City logging 18 new cases.
Lapu-Lapu City’s active cases rose to 110, while Mandaue City’s active cases increased to 59.
Cebu Province, on the other hand, recorded an additional 51 cases, raising its active cases to 299. Bohol also recorded two new cases, raising the active cases in the island province to 91.
Siquijor and Negros Oriental recorded no new cases on November 14, 2020.
Central Visayas had 160 new cases for Saturday with 1,057 active cases among the four provinces in the region. /rcg