TALISAY City and six other towns in Cebu Province remain under Alert Level 1 status starting June 1 to June 15, 2022.
Dr. Mary Jean Loreche, chief pathologist of the Department of Health Central Visayas (DOH 7), said Talisay City and the towns of Alcoy, Borbon, Oslob, Pilar, Santander and Tudela will remain under Alert Level 1 status for the said period.
Loreche clarified this on Saturday, May 28, a day after the Inter-Agency Task Force (IATF) announced the alert level status of local government units (LGUs), where only the three highly urbanized cities of Cebu, Mandaue, and Lapu-Lapu were mentioned as Alert Level 1 areas in Cebu Island.
Loreche noted that Secretary Vivencio Dizon, deputy chief implementer and testing czar of the National Task Force Against Covid-19, said there is no need to mention the seven LGUs since they were already placed under the said status.
“According to Sec. Vince Dizon, due to the high number of LGUs on alert level 1, there is no need to mention all except for those that are newly de-escalated or if the LGU reverts back to Alert Level 2,” she told SunStar Cebu.
She said there were no additional LGUs deescalated to the status since they have not reached the required vaccination rate either for the total eligible population or senior citizens, or both.
Loreche said each LGU needs to have 70 percent of their total eligible population to be fully vaccinated and 70 percent of their senior citizens to be fully vaccinated in order to be de-escalated from Alert Level 2 to Alert Level 1.
Dr. Van Philip Baton, DOH 7 regional medical coordinator for emerging and re-emerging infectious disease, earlier urged the LGUs, especially those that will have a change in administration, to be consistent in their vaccination strategies, saying it takes time for people to take action.
The Department of the Interior and Local Government had also directed the LGUs to be proactive in urging the unvaccinated and those eligible for booster doses to get their shots especially following the detection of the highly contagious Omicron BA.4 subvariant.