Cebu City workers, donning PPEs (personal protective equipment), cleaned several isolation centers on Saturday, August 28. | Photo courtesy of Councilor Joel Garganera
CEBU CITY, Philippines – At least four barangay isolation centers (BICs) in Cebu City were temporarily closed to give way for disinfection.
And city government officials believed this could have caused the disarray reported in other isolation facilities that recently went viral on social media.
Councilor Joel Garganera, head of the city’s Emergency Operations Center, said the BICs in barangays Zapatera, Mabolo, Labangon, and San Nicolas have temporarily stopped accepting asymptomatic COVID-19 patients starting on August 29.
As a result, Garganera said they believed this led contact tracers to house most of the infected individuals to the City Central School.
“We’re not receiving patients [at the four closed BICs] mao nga napuno atong BIC sa Central, [and we continue to have] the same number workforce and it affected the quality of their services,” said Garganera.
He added they will not repeat the implementation of the same procedures unless additional contact tracers will be recruited.
“We should not be doing this unless there is an augmentation of workforce. We’re very sorry for that and we’re thankful for the feed back, it will keep us always on guard,” the councilor explained.
To recall, photos of poor and unsanitary conditions at the City Central School made the rounds on social media.
Cebu City has at least seven isolation centers used to house COVID-19 patients with mild to no symptoms.
These BICs were reactivated since June due to the surge of new infections brought by the presence of the highly transmissible Delta variant.
The EOC earlier promised to improve the conditions in the city-ran isolation facilities.
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