MANILA, Philippines — Interior Secretary Eduardo Año has ordered all Metro Manila mayors to activate their respective novel coronavirus (COVID-19) task forces and intensify contact tracing for the three new confirmed cases.
He also directed them to closely monitor persons with severe acute respiratory infection who might be possible virus carriers and place under home quarantine those may have had contact with the latest cases should they show symptoms.
In a message to reporters on Sunday, Año, however, said that there was no need to impose a lockdown on the metropolis since “we are only on code red sublevel 1.”
He called on the COVID-19 task forces in the National Capital Region to “work double time to ensure that further spread of the virus [was] halted.”
According to Año, “local transmissions pose greater chances for the virus to spread and that’s the last thing we want to happen.”
On Saturday, the Department of Health raised its alert level to code red sublevel 1 after it confirmed three new COVID-19 cases: a 59-year-old woman believed to have been infected by her 62-year-old husband who had no history of foreign travel; and a 48-year-old lawyer who recently returned from Japan.
All three are Filipinos. The first three cases were Chinese tourists, one of whom died of pneumonia. They were from Wuhan City, the epicenter of the virus outbreak.
In a statement, Año reminded all villages nationwide to organize their barangay health emergency response teams (BHERTs), noting that only 60.51 percent or 25,411 of the total 42,045 villages had complied with his directive last month.
Año noted that only the Bicol region has, so far, complied completely with all its 3,471 barangays setting up BHERTs.