Negros Occ does not intend to close borders, guv says

By Dolly Yasa 

BACOLOD City – Governor Eugenio Jose Lacson assured Tuesday that Negros Occidental does not intend to close its borders despite the reported cases of Omicron subvariants of COVID-19 in Western Visayas.

“We’ll have to observe how it goes. That variant has already been detected not only here in Western Visayas but in other areas in the country. If you noticed hospital admission is very low so most likely these are very mild cases. In the meantime, we don’t intend to close our borders and I think it’s too early for that. Let’s just do our share. Let us protect ourselves,” Lacson said.

The governor said there’s no more reason for people to converge this time because the campaign period and the election are over “so it’s more of a behavioral concern how do we treat COVID.”

“Do we take it lightly or we take it seriously and I hope we take it seriously and protect ourselves,” he said.

The Department of Health (DOH) has detected three more cases of the Omicron subvariant BA.2.12.1. in Western Visayas. Omicron is a variant of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that leads to COVID-19.

Three cases of subvariant BA.2.12.1 have been detected in Western Visayas: one vaccinated returning overseas Filipino from the United States, and two are local cases — one of them is vaccinated while the vaccination status of the other is under verification, the DOH reported.