Face mask policy to stay in Davao City, says mayor

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DAVAO CITY — Despite the national government’s move to make the use of face masks optional in open spaces, the city government plans to wait until December to lift the ordinance that mandated the compulsory wearing of face masks in public places.

Mayor Sebastian Duterte said he decided to wait and see first the effects of the lifting of face masks policy on the number of COVID-19 cases to ensure that lifting the ordinance would not bring about another surge.

Duterte supported the recommendation of Dr. Ashley Lopez, acting head of the City Health Office, who asked the city to extend the mandatory wearing of face masks up to the end of the year at least as threats of COVID-19 remained.

Lopez said that after that period, the city could evaluate whether or not  to lift the policy on the mandatory wearing of face masks here.

“The way I see it, it is okay (to extend the face mask policy until December) because I (still) want to look at the experiences of those provinces, towns and cities that do away with the wearing of face masks,” Duterte said on Friday.

“If we see that their experience (of not wearing face masks does not result in the surge of cases, then, it) is okay, we may follow them. (But) I don’t want us to (do away with face masks now),” he added.

Duterte added that COVID-19 had wrought such effects on the city’s economy in the last two years that he could not risk inviting another surge by a hasty decision.

Lopez said the city would continue implementing the mandatory face masks at least until the end of the year because it had been embodied in an ordinance.

“Unlike other provinces and cities (that do not have similar ordinances, we are still imposing the mandatory wearing of face masks because it is what is stated under our city ordinance,” Lopez said.

The Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases has recommended easing the wearing of face masks in open spaces nationwide after the declining cases of COVID-19 and the increasing number of persons vaccinated.

But in Davao City, Lopez said that although the infection rate had gone down, health officials were still worried over the possible effects of the first in-person Kadayawan festival held in August on the number of COVID-19 cases in the city.

Although the infection rate had gone down, Lopez said 114 new cases were reported as of Wednesday, Sept. 7, bringing to 610 the active COVID-19 cases in the city on that day alone.

Lopez, however, said the recovery rate from the disease registered a high of 96.5 per cent, but an alert against the disease remained.

Lopez added that most of the patients had no symptoms.

“That means that we do not have to worry about hospitalizations.
In fact, the utilization rate of our hospitals is quite low, around 30 percent,” he said.

He said, however, the possibility of a new surge due to the Kadayawan Festival last month could not yet be discounted, as the city registered an average of 76 cases per day in almost two months.

“I would not say it is a surge because if you look at the trend, our growth curve has plateaued. We have been having this for the past seven weeks already,” he added.

He urged those who had not yet been vaccinated to immediately go to the vaccination sites and encouraged those who were already vaccinated to get booster shots.

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