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QUICK TEST A Cebu City resident has blood drawn for an antibody test. Photo by Gelo Litonjua / Rappler
CEBU CITY, Philippines – The cities of Mandaue and Lapu-Lapu in Cebu province said Tuesday night, May 12, that they wanted to remain under Enhanced Community Quarantine (ECQ) or “lockdown” while carrying out mass testing efforts.
Earlier on Tuesday, Malacañang announced that the national working group against COVID-19 had loosened restrictions in Cebu province, except Cebu city, placing the townships in the community’s general quarantine from May 16 to 31. . (READ: Metro Manila, Cebu City, Laguna under ECQ ‘modified’ until May 31)
Cebu City remains under ECQ.
“While we welcome such development, we could not simply ignore the harsh realities of our assessment,” Mandaue and Lapu-Lapu said in a joint statement with Cebu City.
Read the full statement here. The | via @ryanmacasero pic.twitter.com/Llc7uiQY2t
– Rappler (@rapplerdotcom) May 12, 2020
“It is still not safe to continue with the community’s general quarantine, furthermore, that a large part of the community has not been tested for COVID-19,” local governments said.
The letter was signed by the mayor of the city of Mandaue, Jonas Cortés, the mayor of the city of Lapu-Lapu, Ahong Chan, and the mayor of the city of Cebu, Edgar Labella.
“We understand the clamor of the people to ease the restrictions, since this would mean an appearance of normality,” said the statement, “but it would not be logical, considering that, based on the initial estimate, approximately 90% of cases in our region is asymptomatic. “
Cebu City was the only city in Central Visayas that remained under ECQ because the Inter-Agency Task Force determined that it was “high risk”. on emerging infectious diseases (IATF-EID) for having the highest number of cases in the country, or 1,660 as of Tuesday. (READ: MAP: Where are the coronavirus cases in Cebu City?)
Meanwhile, the city of Mandaue has at least 109 cases, while the city of Lapu-Lapu has at least 43, as of Monday, the latest official data available from the Visayas Central Health Department.
The 3 cities are coordinating to evaluate at least 40,000 homes by May 21. This would be done using rapid tests, followed by a swab test for those who will obtain an initial positive result from the rapid test.
Although cities are increasing the tests, they estimate that they will only be able to evaluate only around 10% of their population.
The city of Lapu-Lapu has a population of approximately 408,000, the city of Mandaue has a population of 362,000, while the city of Cebu has approximately one million residents.
As the cases were lower in the rest of the Cebu province, these areas were declared “moderate risk” by the IATF. Cities under GCQ will have travel restrictions and allow more industries to operate. (READ: EXPLANER: What happens under the general quarantine of the community?)
“We hope that the national IATF-EID will accept our appeal as we have nothing but the best interest of our people in mind,” they said in the statement.
Cities said they just want more time to test the public first and determine if they are ready to move to GCQ. “We just wanted to make sure that it would be safe for our people once we are ready to migrate to the General Community Quarantine,” they said. – Rappler.com
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