Another LGU office in Quezon town closed due to COVID-19

LUCENA CITY – Another local government office in Gumaca town in the Quezon province will be closed for two weeks after its employees were told to go into home quarantine as a safety measure to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

“Our Municipal Assessor’s Office has presently stopped transactions and will remain closed until the 14-day quarantine of their employees ends on the 27th of September,” Mayor Webster Letargo announced in a public advisory on his Facebook page Saturday.

The said office will resume operations on Sept. 28, the mayor said.

Since Sept. 13, the local government temporarily closed the Rural Health Unit, Human Resource and Management Office, Kalinga Center Business Permit and Licensing Office, Municipal Environment and Natural Resources Office, and the Incident Command Post/Contact Tracing Team after the rise in the number of suspected coronavirus carriers among its employees.

Letargo said these offices would resume operations after thorough disinfection.

On Wednesday, Sept. 15, Letargo reported that at least 58 hospital frontliners in three medical facilities in the locality contracted COVID-19.

On Sept. 10, the government-owned Gumaca District Hospital announced that their rooms for COVID-19 patients have reached full capacity.

Four other hospitals – two private hospitals in this city and another two provincial government-owned in Lopez and Infanta towns – have also issued similar public advisories.

On Thursday, Sept. 16, another public hospital in Catanaun town also closed its Obstetrics Ward/Maternity department to prevent the spread of the virus.

“As a precautionary measure and in observance of the COVID-19 protocols, the said ward is temporarily suspended its operations after several employees have tested positive for the COVID-19 RT-
PCR swab test,” Dr. Rosaline Ojastro, chief of Bondoc Peninsula District Hospital, said in a public advisory posted on social media.

Quezon, which remains under general community quarantine with heightened restrictions until Sept. 30, has been seeing an alarming spike in COVID-19 cases since March.

From Sept. 1 to 17, the IPHO recorded 3,152 cases, with the addition on Friday of 115 new ones. Quezon still has 2,402 active cases.

At least 11 more individuals succumbed to COVID-19 in Quezon, bringing the death toll in the province to 1,130.

Last month, Quezon logged 193 COVID-19 deaths, then the highest monthly mortality figure since the pandemic struck last year.

Dr. Rolando Padre, Quezon Medical Center (QMC) chief of hospital, called on the local officials in the different towns and cities in the province to help in the immediate retrieval of the remains of their residents who died at the QMC.

Padre reported that the unclaimed remains of COVID-19 victims reached 16 in the first week of the month and have piled up at the two morgues of the hospital located in this city and is operated by the Quezon provincial government.

The report did not specify the number of cadavers that were still at the QMC morgues as of Friday.

Padre said the only funeral home in the province located in this city that has its own crematorium can only handle up to eight bodies a day.

Based on the rules set by the Inter-Agency Task Force on Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF), health facilities and crematoriums should ensure that the remains of a patient whose death is or probably due to COVID-19 is cremated within the next 12 hours.

Padre said the cadavers should have been retrieved by relatives of the deceased within 12 hours, in adherence to the protocols of the IATF.

/MUF