DAVAO CITY (MindaNews / 28 Sep) – Amid the rising coronavirus disease (COVID-19) cases, the Department of Health (DOH)-Davao has recommended to place Davao City under Modified Enhanced Community Quarantine (MECQ) and the province of Davao Oriental under Enhanced Community Quarantine (ECQ) effective end of September.
Dr. Rachel Joy Pasion, head of the Regional Epidemiology and Surveillance Unit (RESU) of DOH-Davao, told “Usapang Pangkalusugan: Let’s DOH it, Better!” on Monday that the agency’s recommendation is based on the latest health care utilization rates of these two areas which have remained at critical risk.
“This is as of the latest data that we have, and be reminded that we have very fluid data on hand. So, it changes every week. When we say escalation, we would consider health care utilization of one province. When we check on our health care utilization rate, for Davao City, we recommend MECQ, but for Davao de Oro, we recommend ECQ since health care utilization is at critical risk and that would really depend on the number of COVID beds that they have,” she said.
Pasion said that the agency has already elevated its recommendation to the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF-EID).
She said the provincial officials of Davao de Oro are scheduled to meet on Thursday to discuss the quarantine classification.
Last September 6, Mayor Sara Duterte told Davao City Disaster Radio (DCDR 87.5) that she was not inclined on reverting the city’s status to the most stringent classification even after the health cluster of the local government’s COVID-19 Task Force recommended that it be placed under ECQ.
“We told the health group of the response cluster to review the criteria of an ECQ under the IATF… if our numbers would fall into that criteria of the IATF, so that they can present it better and then we can appeal our community quarantine classification right now, as announced recently, which is GCQ with heightened restrictions,” she said at that time.
Areas placed under General Community Quarantine (GCQ) with heightened restrictions in the region from September 7 to 30 are Davao City, Davao del Norte, Davao de Oro, and Davao Occidental and areas under normal GCQ are Davao Oriental and Davao del Sur.
As of Monday, DOH-Davao reported 91,945 total cases with 20,738 active, 63,362 recovered, and 2,845 deaths.
Out of the total cases, Davao City, the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic in Mindanao, logged 49,001 cases with 9,084 active, 38,419 recovered and 1,498 deaths. Davao de Oro tallied 6,139 cases, Davao del Norte with 16,409, Davao del Sur with 10,272, Davao Occidental with 3,042, and Davao Oriental with 7,082. (Antonio L. Colina IV / MindaNews)
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