By Liv G. Campo • April 29, 2020
Cebu gears up for post-ECQ
Photo Credit: Office of the Presidential Assistant for the Visayas Facebook Page
Presidential Assistant for the Visayas Michael Dino announced that more rapid-testing kits will be made available for the whole province of Cebu. This assurance comes as Cebu prepares to transition from extended community quarantine (ECQ) to general community quarantine (GCQ).
Dino said Cebu has 30,000 donated test kits and another 30,000 swab kits at the Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center. He added that Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing will be shouldered by the government. It will however be done only when a person has tested positive for the virus during the rapid test.
Dino said the lifting of ECQ will be done on a per-barangay basis and will be guided by data from the testing. Barangays with zero cases of Covid may be switched to GCQ faster.
Dino appealed to both the private sector and the government to shoulder the cost of Covid- testing on employees they have allowed to report for work. “If a company allows a 50 percent workforce to come in, 100 percent of them should be tested," he said.
The plan was the result of a meeting between Cebu leaders, the DOH, the military and the private sector. “We cannot just say ECQ, then modified quarantine or general community quarantine because of what we read in social media. We need to have a scientific basis,” Dino said.
DOH 7 regional director Dr. Jaime Bernadas said contact tracing will continue even after the ECQ is lifted. He has requested the mayors to send their health personnel to the barangays and locate those with Covid-19 symptoms.
Dino also assured that Cebu buses will serve the riding public once ECQ is lifted.
“We have buses, but we will still have the curfew. We can have a new normal. We can’t just lift the ECQ then go back to it later. We have to follow, we have to learn the lessons,” he said.
