Cebu City Skyline | CDN Digital photo | Brian J. Ochoa
CEBU CITY, Philippines – Local officials agreed with the findings from OCTA Research that the COVID-19 outbreak here is starting to improve.
But with the city’s Modified Enhanced Community Quarantine (MECQ) status extended until September 7, they said more work needs to be done.
Councilor Joel Garganera, head of the Emergency Operations Center (EOC), said reverting the city to a stricter quarantine status was fruitful.
“Namunga ang efforts natong tanan. Namunga ang tanan restrictions albeit na piit-piit atong ekonomiya pero namunga gyud,” Garganera said in an interview on Monday, August 30, 2021.
Garganera also said they share the same projections made by OCTA, in which they are seeing a decline in COVID-19 cases starting this September.
According to the EOC chief, they have observed fewer patients with severe to critical symptoms of the infection, and hospital beds slowly freeing up.
“In the last four to five days, tag-as gihapon kaayo ta ug admissions sa hospitals. 38 ang admissions pero gahapon, 31 ang naadmit pero direcho dayun sila nasud. Unsay pasabot ani? Di na kaayo lisud magpasud sa hospital,” explained Garganera.
“Most likely tomorrow (August 30), we will be below 3,000 active cases,” he added.
Based on the recent COVID-19 bulletin from the Department of Health in Central Visayas (DOH-7), there are 4,491 active infections in the city as of August 29. On the same day, only 172 new cases were reported in Cebu City.
“Hopefully, magpadayun ni siya (decline). But we will use this extension (MECQ) to bring the cases further down,” Garganera said.
OCTA on Sunday, August 29, predicted that Cebu City may start a downward trend in its number of new COVID-19 cases during the first week of September.
The city was placed under MECQ since August 1 to stem the surge of infections, which local health experts believed is due to the presence of the dreaded Delta variant.
/bmjo
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