THE City Government of Bacolod will ask the Department of Education (DepEd) to open additional schools as quarantine facilities to accommodate the Covid-19 patients in the city.
This was stressed by Vice Mayor El Cid Familiaran, chairman of Bacolod City Inter-Agency Task Force (IATF), on Monday, June 7, as the Covid-19 cases in the city continue to increase.
Familiaran said Councilor Renecito Novero, chairman of the city's quarantine center action team, will finalize their request and it will be submitted to DepEd.
He said, for now, the city is still using about 20 public schools as quarantine facilities and most of them were already occupied.
He added that the rooms in hotels intended for Covid-19 patients were also occupied.
As of June 6, Bacolod City had a total of 10,300 cases of Covid-19. Of the number 8,560 patients already recovered, 1,473 active cases, and 265 deaths.
On the same day, Bacolod City has a total of 128 new Covid-19 cases with one death.
"Our Covid-19 cases continue to increase and we need more facilities to accommodate all the Covid-19 patients so they can complete their 14-day quarantine," Familiaran said.
Familiaran, along with the Emergency Operations Center (EOC) and various cluster teams, such as the contact tracing, extraction, isolation or quarantine facilities, establishments monitoring, testing, information, and education campaign, One hospital Command Center, and the Bacolod City Police Office, held a meeting Monday, June 7, to harmonize their data.
The isolation or quarantine facilities cluster reported that as of Monday, the city still has a total of 187 unutilized beds for Covid-19 patients.
The contact tracing cluster also reported that on June 6, 97 Covid-19 patients were infected due to household transmission and 43 others were infected from outside transmission.