Iligan City now on stricter lockdown

ILIGAN CITY, Lanao del Norte, Philippines — President Rodrigo Duterte has placed this city back under stricter quarantine starting Tuesday after a recent surge in cases of the new coronavirus disease (COVID-19).

Mayor Celso Regencia welcomed the President’s directive, noting that placing the city under a modified enhanced community quarantine status for a month was timely, given that cases of COVID-19 here tripled in three weeks.

Iligan used to be under the least restrictive modified general community quarantine (MGCQ), but Regencia asked that the city be allowed to revert to a stricter lockdown due to a surge in infections.

Metro Manila and the provinces of Bulacan and Batangas in Luzon, and Bacolod City and Tacloban City in the Visayas were placed under general community quarantine for September. The rest of the country were placed under MGCQ.

The President approved the recommendations of the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases in a meeting with key Cabinet officials in Malacañang on Monday night.

Epicenter

Iligan City recorded 312 COVID-19 cases as of Aug. 31, up from the 104 cases recorded on Aug. 12.

Of the 312 cases, 181 were classified as active while 236 (76 percent) were due to local transmission of the virus.

This makes the city the epicenter of virus spread in northern Mindanao, accounting for 52 percent of total active local transmission cases in the region as of Aug. 31.

According to the city health office, 34 of 44 Iligan villages have COVID-19 infections. At least half of the total cases are concentrated in seven urban villages of Poblacion, Tubod, Saray, Maria Cristina, Tomas Cabili, Villa Verde and Suarez.

—With a report from Julie Aurelio