Zamboanga City Hall locks down 5 offices for decontamination

ZAMBOANGA CITY, Zamboanga del Sur — The city government ordered a lockdown of five of its departments inside the city hall building here as cases of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) continued to rise and another employee had passed away.

Sheila Bellen Covarrubias, information officer of the city hall, said the offices of the City Engineers, the City Planning and Development, Human Resource and Management, the divisions of City Museum and City Tourism were placed under lockdown due to COVID-19 infection.

She also confirmed that an employee, the second fatality from city hall since the beginning of the pandemic, passed away four days ago due to COVID-19.

“The government mourns the loss of another employee due to complications of COVID-19,” Covarrubias said in a statement. City Hall had also lost an employee here in August last year due to COVID-19.

As of April 9, the city registered 38 new cases, bringing its total active cases to 321. Since the pandemic, the city recorded a total of 197 deaths and a total of 4,611 cases, most of them now recovered. The city monitored five cases of re-infection.

The city government implements a 50 percent work from home arrangement for its employees starting April 12 to 16.