Baguio City goes on coronavirus lockdown

BAGUIO CITY — Concluding that three Baguio patients who tested positive for the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) were infected elsewhere, Baguio City Mayor Benjamin Magalong ordered the closure of the city’s borders until the end of the Luzon-wide enhanced community quarantine starting on Saturday (Mar. 28).

“I learned from health officials that we don’t have any local transmission. With this information, an opportunity (has presented itself) to fast track our healing process by closing our borders in the next two weeks to non-essential travel except food and other cargo,” the mayor said in a statement, following a peace and order council meeting on Friday (Mar. 27).

Baguio residents outside the summer capital will not be allowed to enter the city, as a result of the lockdown. The lockdown does not include Benguet province from where vegetables are shipped to lowland communities like Metro Manila.

The Department of Health has tagged three COVID-19 patients in the mountain city, including a woman who returned from Italy. Two others came from Metro Manila which was earlier placed under heavy quarantine days before President Duterte enforced the Luzon-wide quarantine.

The Baguio City Public Information Office also listed a fourth potential COVID-19 patient who also traveled from Manila.

Baguio is currently under a 24-hour curfew although household members have been permitted to go out on designated market days to make food and medical supply runs. Vincent Cabreza

/MUF