Iloilo City – Mayor Jerry Treñas yesterday exhorted Western Visayas officials to adopt Bacolod City’s anti-Covid-19 strategies on how the local government managed to sustain the decline of coronavirus infections during the last four weeks.
In a virtual meeting via Zoom, Treñas was joined by Iloilo Gov. Arthur Defensor Jr. and Guimaras Gov. Samuel Gumarin in requesting City Administrator Em Ang, also the concurrent Emergency Operations Center executive director and CoVaC coordinator, who represented Mayor Bing Leonardia in the discussions, to share Bacolod’s programs so that other Region 6 LGUs may learn from them and adopt the same strategy where they are applicable.
Bacolod City, Ang explained, was simply guided by the PDITR (Prevention, Detection, Isolation, Treatment, and Re-integration) strategy issued by the National Inter-Agency Task Force in June.
Based on the PDITR strategy, the Bacolod City government adopted a five-pronged approach by requiring those coming from Manila and Cebu to present a negative RT-PCR test result upon arrival; advising new arrivals or anyone, especially those in the line list, to be confined or quarantined at the hospital, accredited hotels or government-managed isolation facility; not allowing those found positive to go through home quarantine; immediately transferring to isolation facilities those found positive and seal off the residence of first-degree close contacts with the help of barangay officials, Ang continued.
Aside from the two governors, Treñas and Ang, other officials who attended the Zoom meeting were Dr. Roland Jay Fortuna, focal person on COVID-19 of Iloilo City, and Edith Marie Garingalao-Ponsaran of the Province of Capiz.
“Since local governments are in the frontlines, it is good to share local practices and challenges in the fight against the Covid-19 pandemic. That way, we learn from the experience of others and we can replicate what works best in addressing this public health crisis,” Ang said.
Ang added that the city government has strengthened the public’s compliance of minimum health protocols, monitored workplaces such as BPOs, casino and banks, and discouraged mass gatherings, as well as strictly implemented testing and contact-tracing and isolation strategies.
She also said that the city’s initiatives to accelerate vaccination of vulnerable sectors also helped.
About 37 percent of Bacolod’s qualified population for vaccination already received their first dose, while 22 percent had been fully vaccinated, she said.
The provinces of Guimaras and Antique may already be under critical Level 4 in their fight against Covid-19, Gumarin said, while Treñas disclosed that Iloilo City already has 11 confirmed Delta variant infections as of date.
He expressed concerns that the situation may be more challenging in the coming days as the city government sent 104 additional samples to the Department of Health for confirmation whether these are also positive for the Delta variant.
Bacolod City also recorded four cases of Delta variant infections but the patients have already fully recovered, Ang said.
Negros Occidental, on the other hand, has a single case of the Lambda variant.
(Source & photo courtesy of Bacolod City Public Information Office)
