Alaminos City deals with the enhanced community quarantine

Alaminos City, Pangasinan Mayor Bryan Celeste distributes food packs amid the enhanced community quarantine.

MANILA, Philippines — Alaminos City in Pangasinan is known for its hundred islands beaches which attract mostly local and foreign tourists.

However, with the coronavirus disease pandemic, the people of Alaminos are preparing for the wave of COVID-19 infections which will inevitably come to their province.

Leading preparations is Alaminos City, Pangasinan Mayor Bryan Celeste who is 23 years old. His first priority was to immediately deliver food packs to the different barangays with the most vulnerable residents on the first week of the implementation of the enhanced community quarantine in Luzon in an effort to keep sectors of their population at home. This measure was meant to control the spread of the COVID-19 virus most especially to vulnerable sectors.

Celeste was able to do this immediately by utilizing the masterlist provided for by the Barangay Health Workers. “We already have a system for the health care at the barangay level and we just used it to identify who are most vulnerable in the population based on their health profiles,” the young mayor said. The database was in place as early as 2015.

The city’s planning and development office tapped all barangay health workers and worked on the existing database to be able to bring assistance to the population for the month-long community quarantine.

The data base identified the population by age group, with the 15 to 59-year-olds comprising most of the resident population.

Meanwhile, the city has more than 11,000 senior citizens considered vulnerable to the virus.

Alaminos City is still COVID-free and upon the availability of government approved test kits, first in line to be tested are the most vulnerable residents based on the database. The database was a big help in identifying those considered as PUMs or persons under monitoring. These individuals are those with travel history outside of the city.

“We are prepared for the long haul of this COVID-19 crisis and we are pacing our actions; the most important thing is that we took care of the basics first, like a masterlist of the population and identification of those with existing health conditions,” Celeste said.

Alaminos is battling COVID-19 and is helping in the prevention using a database that guarantees the delivery of service.