‘No appeal yet for city’

By Joseph B.A. Marzan

 

There is no word yet if the Iloilo City government will appeal its General Community Quarantine (GCQ) status to a more relaxed status, its Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) Task Force spokesperson said on Monday.

Data from the regional office of the Department of Health (DOH) as of Nov. 2, 2020 indicated that the city had 27 new COVID-19 cases.

The city government’s own City Epidemiological Surveillance Unit (CESU) under the City Health Office (CHO) confirmed 29 new COVID-19 cases on Nov. 1.

The latest cases included five new members of the city’s contact tracing team who were hired through the Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG).

COVID-19 Task Force spokesperson Jeck Conlu told RMN Iloilo on Monday they had no plans yet to appeal the city’s GCQ status.

Presidential spokesperson Harry Roque said on Oct. 30 that the city was one of the seven areas in the country that will remain under GCQ from Nov. 1 to 30.

Other areas under GCQ are Bacolod City, Metro Manila, Batangas, Tacloban City, Iligan City, and Lanao Del Sur, while the rest of the country is now under the “more permissive” Modified GCQ.

“It will still depend whether or not we will appeal on Nov. 15. We will look at the situation first because Mayor Jerry Treñas ordered that we should not be complacent when cases go down. Although this is good on our side, it means that the strategies we implemented are effective. But we still cannot be confident because they sometimes go up-and-down,” said Conlu.

Conlu added that the city will continue to update through its daily meetings with Iloilo City Mayor Jerry Treñas and the city’s COVID Team, a group of private doctors providing pandemic-related advice to the mayor.

As to the contact tracers who tested positive, he said that they would continue their work while in isolation, and would be deployed as soon as they have negative results on repeat testing.

DOH data as of Nov. 2 indicates that Iloilo City has had a total of 4,049 confirmed COVID-19 cases, with 534 active cases, 3,427 recoveries, and 88 deaths.