Health exec in Quezon welcomes GCQ extension

LUCENA CITY –– The top provincial health official of Quezon province welcomed the decision of President Duterte to extend by another month the general community quarantine (GCQ) in the province, from May 1 to 31.

“We really need that GCQ extension,” Dr. Grace Santiago, head of the Integrated Provincial Health Office (IPHO), said in a television interview here on Thursday, April 29.

She said COVID-19 cases in the province were still rising, with a number of them in need of hospital confinement.

“Our hospitals were having a hard time. Those patients really need hospital interventions,” Santiago said.

She added that most suspected virus carriers have already been classified as “moderate to severe cases.”

On Wednesday, President Duterte announced in a pre-recorded briefing that Quezon, who has been under GCQ since April 1, is one of the provinces in the country that would remain under GCQ for May.

Santiago emphasized that local governments under the new guidelines from the Inter-Agency Task Force have the power to impose additional restrictions if the GCQ would not be enough to curb the rise of COVID-19 cases in their localities.

“They are authorized to impose localized lockdown,” Santiago explained.

She disclosed that based on their monitoring, there are barangays in the province that have “highly concentrated” infections.

“Hawa-hawa na (Residents are infecting each other),” she stressed.

As of April 28, Quezon has 845 active cases, out of the 10,233 COVID-19 infections recorded since March last year.

The death toll in the province jumped to 395, with the deaths on Wednesday of three virus carriers in Candelaria and one each in Mauban and San Narciso.

Of 41 municipalities in Quezon, only San Narciso has no active case as of April 28.

LZB