Bacolod mayor pushes for MGCQ shift

BACOLOD City Mayor Evelio Leoardia has requested the National Inter-Agency Task Force (NIATF) to de-escalate the community quarantine status of Bacolod City from general community quarantine (GCQ) to modified general community quarantine (MGCQ) effective Friday, October 16, 2020.

In his letter dated October 15 and addressed to Department of Health Secretary Francisco Duque, chairman of IATF on Emerging Infectious Diseases, Leonardia said the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) interventions that they have undertaken under a centralized system at the Emergency Operations Center (EOC), with the guidance and close supervision of IATF Chief Implementer for Visayas Melquiades Feliciano, have resulted to a continuous decline of Covid-19 cases in Bacolod City during the last two weeks.

He said as of October 15, there are 591 active Covid-19 cases and 4,491 accumulated cases in Bacolod City. The recoveries have reached 3,937 or 85.29 percent, which correlates to good management and treatment of Covid-19 cases. There are only five deaths for October while there were 64 deaths in September.

Based on the local government unit (LGU) risk matrix, the two-week growth rate of Covid-19 cases is -58 percent, which is considered low, while the average daily attack rate is down to 5.32 percent from 11 percent weeks ago.

“We have successfully implemented a Covid-19 surveillance testing in our three major public markets that yielded a positivity rate of 1.5 percent with 25 confirmed cases out of 1,665 vendors tested. An additional 334 vendors were also tested this Tuesday, October 13, and still awaiting results,” Leonardia said.

He said they have already started the implementation of the Bacolod City Contact Tracing System (BacTrac), a localized web and mobile application using the South Cotabato Covid Contact Tracing System, enacted through City Ordinance No. 941. A total of 213,319 residents and 5,128 establishments have registered to the system.

The system complements the existing aggressive contract tracing operations.

“We are also continuously working to expand our healthcare capacities, including providing additional beds and hiring health workers. The healthcare capacity utilization in all tertiary private and government hospitals in Bacolod City is only 64 percent, only less than half, of which is from Bacolod City while the rest are Covid-19 patients from other LGUs (local government units) in the province of Negros Occidental. With these measures in place, we are confident that the City of Bacolod is ready to transition into MGCQ,” he added.