Cebu City is back on general community quarantine after it was placed on modified enhanced community quarantine back in August when the city and the rest of the island experienced a surge in coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) cases.
The highly transmissible delta variant of the disease, which was detected on our shores during this period, may have been responsible for the sudden increase, or it may have been the complacent attitude of the general public towards safety and health protocols. Or both.
Either way, cases have been going down in the past week, as they usually do after going up for a certain amount of time.
I’m not sure if Oplan Puyo has made a difference in Cebu City. If it did, it must have been very minimal because, for all intents and purposes, life had gone on as usual.
Granted, joggers, runners and walkers were barred and continue to be barred from the Cebu City Sports Center, which was converted into an isolation facility, while other public places where people could exercise “safely” were also off-limits. That is, until Tuesday, Sept. 7, 2021.
Anyway, I’m bringing this up because in my neck of the woods in Barangay Sambag 1, particularly on Urgello St., no one seemed to have paid attention to Oplan Puyo.
Last month, I ended up calling the Abellana Police Station because children were playing on the street without masks and were not observing social distancing and it was near midnight only to be told by the cop who answered that he didn’t know where Urgello St. was.
Either he was new to the city and truly didn’t know his way around or he was oblivious to my complaint because the station’s personnel were busy attending to more important business, whatever that may have been.
So I stopped calling after that.
I didn’t want to be grouch-tagged. It’s bad enough that some members of the police station know me by face after having gone there in person several times to complain about, you know, things. Also, I figured if some of my neighbors didn’t care, why should I, right?
The barangay certainly doesn’t. Don’t get me wrong. It used to. I should know since I’ve called them several times since the pandemic began to report quarantine violators and they’ve always responded. Perhaps they got tired because the problem always manages to resurface.
Anyway, I just want to give the authorities a shout-out. They can always Google Sambag 1, particularly Urgello St., if they don’t know where it is.
Oh, wait! I may be barking up the wrong tree. Maybe I should direct my concerns to the Department of the Interior and Local Government.