Digos mayor eyes switching back to ECQ, Davao Occidental gov locks down village

DIGOS CITY – Mayor Josef Cagas considers ordering a return to enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) here, after noting the number of people going out of their homes failing to observe the “new normal.”

In nearby Davao Occidental, Governor Claude Bautista ordered a lockdown in a village of Malita town after a resident, who recently died at a COVID-19 facility in Davao City, tested positive for COVID-19.

“Under the GCQ (general community quarantine), there are people who presume that we have returned to normalcy,” Mayor Cagas said in a virtual presser on Wednesday. “That could be the reason why we are seeing a lot of them gradually going outside their houses after we lifted the ECQ.

The mayor said he was preparing a letter to Interior and Local Government Secretary Eduardo Año asking to exempt the province from the order of the InterAgency Task Force on emerging infectious diseases (EID) to lift the city’s ECQ and switch on to GCQ.

“We (still) have to level up the implementation of all the protocols to prevent the virus from entering our territory,” Cagas said.

He cautioned people here not to be complacent, saying that everybody must adapt to the ‘new normal’ since the fight against COVID-19 is not yet over.

“The ‘new normal’ (requires) you to wear a face mask, bring your quarantine pass and observe social distancing when you go out of your homes to buy food and medicine,” he said.

“Wash your hands with soap and water or disinfect before entering your house to ensure that your family will be safe from the virus,” he added.

Cagas said the local government had been studying how to manage the flow of people coming in and out of its borders, especially from areas with notable cases of COVID-19.

But he said it would be hard to lock down its borders as vehicles pass by the national highways here on their way to other parts of Mindanao.

He said the easing of the border lockdown had added to the influx of people, who come here from other Davao del Sur towns, to buy food and grocery supplies, transact with the banks, and even pay bills and amortizations with several lending institutions here.

In Davao Occidental’s capital town of Malita, Governor Bautista locked down a village on Tuesday after a 65-year-old resident who died at the Southern Philippines Medical Center tested positive for COVID-19.

Bautista said the patient, a resident of Barangay Bulila, was suffering from stroke due to hypertension and heart ailment, when she was referred from a hospital here to the SPMC on April 30.

“When she was brought to the hospital in Digos City, (she) was already in critical condition due to hypertension and heart problem,” Bautista said.

“We have to find out where she got the virus because she had no history of travel outside the province, and our borders were closed during the enhanced community quarantine,” he added.

The governor said he ordered the lockdown of Barangay Bulila and told health workers to take swab tests from all members of the family to immediately detect and isolate those infected with the virus.

“We have enough rapid test kits and swab test kits in the province so we can contain the virus in that particular area if anybody will turn out positive for COVID-19,” Bautista said.

Health officials are also readying the conduct of rapid antibody testing for the village’s 2,800 population.

Bautista said health workers had started contact tracing people who may have come in contact with the patient before she died.

He also assured the patient’s family of financial aid.

“We have tried our best to protect our people from the virus but we cannot fully guarantee that nobody will get infected since only God knows what lies in the future,” he added.

The governor had earlier lowered the enhanced community quarantine in the province to general community quarantine based on the recommendation of the national IATF-EID, which tagged Davao Occidental as a “low risk” area for COVID-19 in the region.

LZB