MANILA, Philippines — The COVID-19 situation in the city of San Juan is “definitely improving,” its mayor Francis Zamora said Tuesday.
In an interview with INQUIRER.net’s INQside Look, Zamora said that as of April 19, San Juan has 730 active COVID-19 cases with 6,446 recoveries and 164 deaths.
Zamora pointed out that just a day before, on April 18, San Juan has 953 active cases while on April 17, the city has 1,098 active cases.
“Definitely improving. Ako kasi very numbers-based ako. Every time I make decisions or policies, talagang numbers-based tayo and numbers don’t lie,” Zamora said when asked about the situation in their city amid the fight against COVID-19.
(I a numbers-based person. Every time I make decisions or policies, it’s really numbers-based and numbers don’t lie.)
Zamora attributed the decline to the implementation of enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) and modified enhanced community quarantine (MECQ) in Metro Manila.
“You will see that after stabilizing at around 1,000 level, after ECQ and at the start of MECQ, we are now seeing a decline in the number of active cases. I am hopeful and optimistic that this decline will continue in the coming days,” Zamora said.
“Ito na yung hinihintay nating epekto ng ECQ at MECQ. Hindi naman kasi agad-agad mararamdaman yan. It will really take some time and ito na nga yung hinihintay natin and hopefully ma-sustain all the way,” he added.
(This is the effect of the ECQ and MECQ that we have been waiting for. We cannot easily see the effect. It will really take some time but this is what we have been waiting for and hopefully we can sustain it all the way.)
Zamora said vaccination efforts are still ongoing in the city using vaccines provided by the national government. The city government has also procured 100,000 AstraZeneca vaccine shots which is expected to arrive in June.
As of April 19, the country has 141,375 active COVID-19 cases.
DOH’s COVID-19 bulletin shows that 788,322 patients have recovered from the disease while 16,048 have died.