THE city was hardly awake for Monday, Feb. 17, when a fire alarm rang out in Mandaue City, in Barangay Centro, a stone’s throw from the City Hall.
Right near where the fire started was the house of retired Municipal Trial Court Judge Gerardo Gestopa Jr. In the melee, he and his wife Louella reportedly rushed back to the house supposedly to save their grandson Jeric, and that was the last thing witnesses saw. After the fire, investigators saw charred remains of a woman and an unrecognizable one. They are still looking for one more body.
Over the weekend, the Department of Health (DOH)-Research Institute for Tropical Medicine (RITM), found strains of the poliovirus in the water samples from the Butuanon River in Mandaue City. The virus causes Poliomyelitis, or polio, a crippling killer disease that gnaws on nerves and, in worst cases, paralysis and even death. On the same day that the DOH 7 reported the virus in the Butuanon sample, the Philippines found its 17th polio case, a one-year-old boy in Nueva Ecija. The Butuanon discovery is one stealthy zombie so close to home, rising after 19 years of the country being polio-free.
While at that, in China, is a slight swell in the number of new Covid-19 cases and 105 more deaths, bringing the total to 1,770 since the December outbreak. This, after a steady decline of new cases in the last three days. France reported the very first death from Covid-19 outside of Asia, an 80-year-old Chinese tourist from Hubei Province. Sixteen Filipinos in Japan reportedly tested positive of the virus. While experts have given the virus and the resulting disease their proper names, they admit that the devil is an evolving one, and thus it still pays to err on the side of caution. However, now that 52 of the 53 patients under investigation (PUIs) in Central Visayas for the Covid-19 have been released, we gain lead time to further strengthen measures to ensure public safety and protection.
Meanwhile, Cebu City Councilor Eugenio Gabuya Jr. is drafting an ordinance entitled “An Ordinance Establishing Senior Citizens Halfway House in Cebu City.”
“Almost in every part of the city, there is an abandoned vagrant or homeless senior citizen,” said Gabuya.
The elderly gets to stay in the halfway house while the City exerts efforts to link up with relatives. Gabuya is drafting the ordinance as of the moment, but the move certainly lifts the spirit amid a Monday that greeted us rather darkly.