591 Carbon Market vendors have undergone swab tests

The swab testing for Carbon Market vendors continues until Friday. | Photo Courtesy of Cebu City EOC

CEBU CITY, Philippines — The Carbon Market vendors have generally been cooperative with the pooled testing for the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) conducted by the city government in the past two days.

At least 591 market vendors including stall owners and ambulant vendors have already submitted to the swab testing since September 30, 2020 until today, October 1, 2020.

The city’s Emergency Operations Center (EOC) initially targeted an estimated 2,000 Carbon Market vendors, but they now reduced the target to 1,250 as this had been based on the actual number of stall owners and ambulant vendors that were registered in the three units of the market.

There were 295 vendors swabbed on Wednesday while 266 more had been swabbed today. The swab tests will continue until Friday, October 2, 2020.

The testing of the Carbon market vendors was conducted to identify if there had been an undetected community transmission in the island’s largest public market.

The results are expected to come out within 3 to 5 days, until which those, who were swabbed, will be placed under quarantine.

However, the operations of the market is not affected as the vendors, who were swabbed were allowed to assign a temporary vendor for their stall in their place.

The EOC has encouraged the public to get tested as well so that community surveillance can be increased.

“With our ongoing efforts to conduct targeted testing on specific groups and increased efforts on community surveillance and monitoring headed by our CHD Doctors, we are bracing ourselves for the increase in the number of cases in the next few days. We are at a point that we are trying to capture the blind spots in transmission in the community, especially the silent spreaders,” said Councilor Joel Garganera, the deputy chief implementor of the EOC.

“I, therefore, encourage everyone to book an appointment for free swab testing in our testing centers like Bayanihan Swab Center, VSMMC, and Cluster Clinics. Not just in compliance with requirements for medical reasons, work, or travel requirements, but for us to ensure that you are not a carrier of the virus,” Garganera said.

He said that people should no longer be afraid to find out if they were COVID-19 positive as the city government would provide support all the way to recovery.

Read: Rama: ‘Let us free our senior citizens’

The EOC assurance also came as they defended the stay at home order for senior citizens amid calls for the lifting of this order so that elderly could go out of their homes.

But the EOC said that the order was not to make senior citizens feel like prisoners in their homes, but to protect them from contracting COVID-19. /dbs

Read: EOC defends stay-at-home order for senior citizens: We’re keeping them safe