LAOAG CITY—Three towns and a city in Ilocos Sur reverted to modified enhanced community quarantine (MECQ), the second most stringent containment classification in the country, to curb the further spread of COVID-19 for two weeks beginning Friday, October 22.
In an advisory, Governor Ryan Luis Singson said that stricter quarantine curbs were implemented in the city of Candon and the municipalities of Narvacan, San Emilio, and Galimuyod after most of the 1,743 active cases in the province were traced in these four areas.
The 28 other towns and cities in the province would remain under general community quarantine with heightened restrictions until October 31, Singson said.
On September 22, at least 21 towns and cities in the province were placed under ECQ, the strictest quarantine classification in the country, amid the clamor from medical workers for stricter curbs due to the alarming rise in COVID-19 cases fueled by the Delta variant.
At least 500 health workers in the province were reported by the Ilocos Sur Medical Society to have contracted the virus in September as the province battled its worst COVID-19 surge.
Total COVID-19 bed occupancy rate in the entire province is now back under the safe level, with 57.2 percent of its 423 beds occupied, according to the latest data from the Department of Health.
The province’s average daily attack rate (ADAR), however, remained high at 17.00.
As of Friday, the province had logged 17,240 COVID-19 cases (15,183 recoveries; 312 deaths) since the pandemic broke out in March last year.