Guv says no border closures amid COVID surge in Iloilo

By Dolly Yasa

BACOLOD City – Negros Occidental Governor Eugenio Jose Lacson said Thursday that the province will not close its borders despite an uptrend in COVID-19 cases in Iloilo.

“We will maintain the same situation and we do not intend to close our borders. We really cannot go back to the scenario of closing borders, of lockdowns and right now cases are manageable and our hospitals have no build-up of COVID cases,” Lacson told reporters.

Lacson said most of the cases are mild only and it proves that the vaccination drive has helped.

As for the province’s COVID-19 situation, Lacson said Negros Occidental remains under Alert Level 2.

Cases in the province are also going up and down, he noted.

“Lately it went up to 33, but it went down again because of recoveries on new cases. We’ll see and observe what’s happening in Iloilo and how severe the cases are,” the governor added.

Based on the July 6, 2022 monitoring of the Department of Health (DOH) in Western Visayas, Negros Occidental only recorded five new cases, while Bacolod City recorded only four new cases.

As of July 7, Region 6 reported 132 cases out of 1,302 persons tested or a positivity rate of 10.14 percent.

Iloilo City logged 59 new local cases while Iloilo province recorded 40 new cases. Bacolod City reported 7 new cases while Negros Occidental posted 2.

Majority of the cases are asymptomatic (41.99 percent) and mild (49.2 percent).

Health care utilization rates remain low for intensive care unit beds (82 percent available), isolation beds (66 percent available), ward beds (71 percent), and ventilators (92 percent).

The region has logged 185,468 cases since the pandemic broke out with 1,374 active cases, 177,976 recoveries, and 6,006 deaths.