NIATF has call on quarantine status, mayor says

By Dolly Yasa

BACOLOD City – Mayor Evelio Leonardia will wait the decision of the National Inter-Agency Task Force against the coronavirus disease 2019 or COVID-19 on quarantine status of this city by July 31, 2020.

Bacolod City Information Officer Danny Dangcalan said Leonardia will let NIATF make the call on whether the city reverts to the Enhanced Community Quarantine (ECQ) as appealed by two doctors’ groups here.

In a virtual meeting with local chief executives and health officials in the region Wednesday afternoon, Secretary Carlito Galvez Jr., chief implementer of the NIATF, said he does not support the doctors’ call to place the entire Bacolod City under a two-week ECQ following a spike in local transmissions of COVID-19.

Dangcalan said Galvez held a meeting with Western Visayas governors, mayors of two highly urbanized cities, and members of the Regional Task Force on July 29 at the Zuri Hotel in Mandurriao, Iloilo City.

Attending the meeting were Governors Florencio Miraflores of Aklan, Rhodora Cadiao of Antique, Esteban Contreras of Capiz, Samuel Gumarin of Guimaras, Arthur Defensor Jr. of Iloilo, and Mayor Jerry Treñas of Iloilo City.

Joining them online were Gov. Eugenio Jose Lacson of Negros Occidental, Mayor Evelio Leonardia of Bacolod City, and Bacolod Lone District Rep. Greg Gasataya.

Galvez said “in the opening of the economy, we cannot afford total lockdowns of cities and provinces.”

He also said that instead of an ECQ, “targeted and surgical lockdowns of only affected areas are the necessary steps to protect more lives and let our economy recover.”

Galvez said that a new strategy to fight the pandemic is to impose localized lockdowns such as in streets, houses, groups of houses, and a cluster of emerging hot spots.

As of this writing Bacolod City has 177 confirmed COVID-19 positive cases with 25 new ones reported by the Department of Health Wednesday afternoon.

Earlier, two doctors’ groups posted an online petition addressed to President Duterte to revert Bacolod to ECQ status citing a spike in the number of COVID cases in the city.

But the business community said it is impractical.