No more room in Iloilo’s isolation centers
ILOILO CITY, Iloilo, Philippines — Isolation facilities for new coronavirus disease (COVID-19) patients in several towns in Iloilo province have been overwhelmed by the continued arrival of overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) and stranded residents requiring quarantine.
“We are full to the brim. We cannot temporarily accept more,” Mayor Raul Banias of Concepcion town told the Inquirer.
Banias said the local government had transformed government housing units that had yet to be turned over to beneficiaries into a temporary quarantine facility.
He said only 50 people could be accommodated in 50 houses but as of Wednesday, 67 people were staying there.
“It is supposed to be one person per house but we [allowed] family members [to] occupy some of the units in order to accommodate them,” said Banias, a doctor.
He sought assistance from Iloilo Gov. Arthur Defensor Jr. to accommodate another 28 OFWs and stranded residents in a hotel in Iloilo City which serves as a quarantine facility. “They can transfer to our town’s facility if some of the units will be vacated,” Banias said.
Suspension
He said most of Iloilo’s 42 towns and one city are experiencing lack of isolation facilities due to the deluge of returning OFWs and residents staying in Metro Manila.
Iloilo mayors earlier passed a resolution calling for the indefinite suspension of the transport of stranded people from the capital region amid a surge of COVID-19 cases involving those coming from outside the province.
In a resolution, the provincial chapter of League of Municipalities of the Philippines (LMP) told the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases that local governments needed to improve their response measures and capacity to handle returning OFWs and residents.
More time
“We want residents of our municipalities home with their families. But we hope they understand that many local governments and their health personnel are overwhelmed. We have to balance this with our capacity to absorb the arrival of stranded [people] needing isolation,” San Enrique Mayor Rosario Mediatrix Fernandez, president of LMP Iloilo, told the Inquirer in an earlier interview.
“We are just asking for more time. They cannot just dump all the stranded persons from Manila to local government units. This needs to be organized, systematized and coordinated,” Fernandez said.Department of Health records showed that Western Visayas reported 1,158 COVID-19 cases, 513 of which were active, as of July 28. The region recorded 16 deaths and 629 recoveries.
But of the total cases, 842, or 73 percent, involved repatriated OFWs and stranded people transported from Metro Manila and Cebu.
