Quezon mayor puts town under 48-hour lockdown due to 1st COVID-19 case

LUCENA CITY –– With its first confirmed coronavirus (COVID-19) patient, Lucban town in Quezon province will be placed under a 48-hour total lockdown on Saturday and Sunday.

“All residents are thus directed to strictly remain within their residences during the total lockdown, without prejudice, however, to any justifiable medical emergency,” Mayor Olivier Dator, stated in his Administrative Order No. 39 on Thursday and posted on his Facebook.

Dator stressed that during the total lockdown, all quarantine passes issued to residents, farmers, businesses including private vehicle quarantine stickers and the like, are suspended.

“All business establishments and undertaking – including the public market, grocery stores, restaurants, food delivery business, sari-sari stores – are strictly prohibited and thus, should remain closed during the said period,” the mayor said.

He also ordered all unauthorized persons or vehicles to be denied entry to the locality during the lockdown.

Dator said even barangay officials and volunteers are not exempted during the lockdown hours.

Only hospital staff, drug store and health care workers, mayor’s office personnel, barangay captain, and members of the Lucban Task Force COVID-19 are exempted from the order, Dator explained.

On Thursday, a “45-year-old female health worker at the Quezon Medical Center” in Lucena became the first recorded confirmed COVID-19 patient from the locality.

Dator said the patient, who is asymptomatic and confined in a medical facility in Lucena, had not set foot in their town after the local government started the strict implementation of the enhanced community quarantine order.

The recorded COVID-19 cases in Quezon rose to 53, according to the report from the Integrated Provincial Health Office on Thursday.

The report also showed that the province has one “probable” COVID-19 patient and 234 suspected carriers of the virus.

With the recovery of the four patients and the death of seven others, the number of active COVID-19 carriers in the province is down to 42.

LZB