The San Juan City Hall (Photo from the the city’s Facebook account)
MANILA, Philippines – San Juan City has recorded a surge in active COVID-19 cases since the beginning of March as it recorded 671 active infections, Mayor Francis Zamora said Tuesday.
“We started at 61 during March 1, and it has risen to 671 in a month’s time so we are really seeing a surge here in San Juan,” Zamora said in an interview on ABS-CBN News Channel.
The COVID-19 death toll in the city stands at 116.
Zamora added that its facilities for COVID-19 patients are already full.
Mayor Francis Zamora. FILE PHOTO
“Our San Juan Medical Center is full. Our Kalinga Center, which is our quarantine facility is already full,” the mayor stressed, adding that the San Juan National High School, serving as the city’s second quarantine facility, is 80 percent full.
“But what’s helping us really are the hotels that the national government is allocating now for us,” Zamora added.
“Ito yung mga hotels outside San Juan which are [designated] to those quarantining asymptomatic cases and mild symptoms only.”
(These are the hotels outside San Juan which are for quarantining asymptomatic cases and mild symptoms only.)
Previously, President Rodrigo Duterte placed Metro Manila, Cavite, Laguna, Bulacan and Rizal—known as the Greater Manila Area or now called as the “National Capital Region Plus”— under a week-long enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) due to rising COVID-19 cases.
Zamora believes the ECQ from March 29 to April 4 will slow down the transmission of COVID-19.
“Keeping them in their homes really helps us because less people in the streets means less transmissions,” he said.
“So itong one week na ito (So this one week), we will really maximize the push to be able to bring down the numbers. What we really need here is discipline from ourselves,” he added.
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