A portion of Osmeña Boulevard in downtown Cebu City. | CDN Digital file photo
CEBU CITY, Philippines – Local officials here welcomed the decision of the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Disease (IATF) to place the city under a more lenient quarantine status.
For Councilor Joel Garganera, downgrading the city from Modified Enhanced Community Quarantine (MECQ) to General Community Quarantine (GCQ) showed that their efforts to contain the spread of COVID-19 were fruitful.
“All our efforts have really paid off with the cooperation between the city, the EOC (Emergency Operations Center), hospitals, private sectors, and our law enforcement agencies,” said Garganera who heads the city’s EOC.
However, he reminded the public to be consistent in following health protocols, regardless of the city’s quarantine status.
“At this point, it has become apparent to us that we should not depend on how we act on our quarantine status; rather, we must all have the same consistent behavior regardless of quarantine status– always mindful, careful, and faithful in complying with the minimum health protocols until it becomes a habit and a reflex for all of us,” he said.
Garganera added that even if Cebu City will be transitioning to GCQ on Wednesday, September 8, hospitals have not fully recovered and that they still record triple digits in the number of new cases.
“Our hospitals are recovering, but it is not in a level that we can say that they have recovered. With the lowering of the quarantine status, the public tends to get complacent, especially now that we are approaching the holiday season,” he said.
“And this is not on the basis of a mere speculation as we have experienced this in the past 3 surges that the moment we put our guard down, we are just putting ourselves into harm’s way once more,” he added.
Malacañang on Monday, September 6, announced that the IATF approved recommendations to place Cebu City and Mandaue City under GCQ after a month and a week of MECQ.
Cebu City was reverted to MECQ last August 1 due to a new surge of COVID-19 that resulted in congested hospitals, record-breaking daily number of new cases, and more fatalities related to the infection.
The city’s GCQ status will start this Wednesday and will continue until September 30.
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