PAMPANGA Governor Dennis Pineda instructed all municipal and city mayors in the province on Thursday, August 26, 2021, to speed up the rollout of vaccines and activate as well their respective temporary treatment and monitoring facilities (TTMF).
During an emergency meeting held at the Capitol's new legislative building, he told the local chief executives that, "we need to expedite the vaccination rollout. If we can vaccinate 20,000 or more people per day, better."
Pineda appealed to the mayors to use their existing TTMF in isolating individuals who are identified as close contacts of those who tested positive for the coronavirus disease (2019) Covid-19, as the utilization rate of ward beds in both private and public hospitals is approaching critical level.
The average reported cases ballooned to 400 daily.
As of August 25, Pampanga has recorded a total number of 33,173 confirmed Covid-19 cases: 5,268 of which are active; 26,249 have recovered; while 1,656 have died.
Special Assistant to the Governor and Provincial Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office chief Angelina Blanco pitched in that that there are still 659 available isolation beds across the province.
With the said total number of available isolation beds, Pineda asked the local chief executives to maximize their respective TTMF and strengthen the contact-tracing within their area of jurisdiction.
The governor also enjoined the local leaders to strictly implement localized containment or granular lockdown in the barangay level in order to mitigate the transmission of the deadly virus and implement the "Prevent, Detect, Isolate, Treat, Reintegrate, and Immunize" (PDITR-I) strategy along with the health and safety protocols.
"At this time, we need to prioritize imposing a 10-day granular lockdown only on barangays hit by Covid-19 surge," Pineda said, stressing that putting a town or city on lockdown will affect the livelihood of Kapampangans, as well as the economy of the province.
The governor said that the Provincial Government is exerting its best efforts to address the needs of Kapampangans, especially in these trying times. (PR)