Lapu-Lapu City to ask pandemic task force to retain its Alert Level 2 status

FILE PHOTO: Mayor Junard “Ahong” Chan

CEBU CITY — The Lapu-Lapu City government will ask the national pandemic task force to reconsider its decision to put the city under Alert Level 3.

In a Facebook post, Mayor Junard “Ahong” Chan said he will ask the Inter-Agency Task Force on Emerging and Infectious Disease (IATF-EID) to maintain Lapu-Lapu City’s COVID-19 Alert Level 2.

“I hope that we can still change the decision because it would be difficult for our residents who are still reeling from the effects of Typhoon Odette,” Chan said in Cebuano.

The task force recently recommended that Lapu-Lapu City be placed under a much heightened Alert Level 3 from January 9-15.

Dr. Mary Jean Loreche, chief pathologist of the Department of Health in Central Visayas, said some data in Lapu-Lapu City need to be rectified.

The decision to place Lapu-Lapu City was based on the high critical utilization rate in its hospitals, said Loreche.

“This was a mistaken encoding of numbers,” she said.

Loreche said some of the admissions in the hospital were mistakenly tallied as COVID-19 patients when they are not.

The corrections, she said, were already sent to the Department of Interior and Local Government and the IATF.