EVEN though coronavirus infections in Cebu City have been overtaken by the number of recoveries, Mayor Edgardo Labella prefers to have the city remain under general community quarantine (GCQ) on Aug. 16, 2020.
“We will be happy if there is going to be a downgrade to modified general community quarantine (MGCQ), but if you ask me, I would rather that we maintain the general community quarantine status because there is a better control of the movement of people,” Labella told reporters during a send-off ceremony for 151 members of the Special Action Force (SAF) on Tuesday, Aug. 11.
Labella said Cebu City’s recovery rate was 71 percent as of Tuesday with about 6,895 people in the city now recovering from Covid-19.
Around 1,724 active cases remained, while a total of 603 have died.
Whether the city is put under GCQ or MGCQ, Labella urged his constituents to always follow the health protocols as Covid-19 still remains regardless of the Inter-Agency Task Force (IATF) for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases’ decision on Cebu City’s quarantine status.
Last Aug. 10, the Department of Health (DOH) Central Visayas reported 11 coronavirus cases, the lowest number of infections recorded in a day in Cebu City since June. There were also no recorded deaths that day.
Labella thanked Environment Secretary Roy Cimatu, the IATF’s chief overseer for the Visayas, and his deputy, retired Maj. Gen. Melquiades Feliciano, for their efforts to curb the number of cases in the city.
He also thanked President Rodrigo Duterte for giving Cebu City’s Covid-19 situation his attention.
National tally
Meanwhile, the DOH on Tuesday reported 2,987 additional cases of coronavirus infections, bringing the total case count in the Philippines to 139,538.
Of the total case count, 68,794 were active cases, referring to patients who were still in the hospitals or in quarantine.
About half of the new cases or 1,510 were from Metro Manila.
The provinces with the highest number of cases were Cavite with 398, Laguna with 144, Iloilo with 135 and Cebu with 119.
In a case bulletin as of 4 p.m., the DOH also reported 280 new recoveries, bringing the total to 68,482.
An additional 19 mortalities raised the death toll to 2,312. (SunStar Philippines, PAC / JKV)