Dagupan to stay under GCQ as 5 city employees positive for coronavirus

BAGUIO, Philippines – Dagupan City Mayor Brian Lim signed on Sunday afternoon, May 31, Executive Order No. 31 suspending the enforcement of the modified general community quarantine (MGCQ) and retaining GCQ instead.

This was after 5 city employees tested positive for COVID-19 on Sunday morning.

Lim said GCQ will still be followed from June 1 to 15, though Dagupan is among the areas supposed to shift to MGCQ.

According to the mayor, the 5 employees were all considered frontliners. It was not immediately clear which departments of the city government they belonged to.

Their results came after the first batch of laboratory results was confirmed by the Philippine Red Cross in Manila.

The employees, who are asymptomatic or not showing symptoms, have now been isolated. Contact tracing is also being conducted.

Two of them are from Barangay Carael, one from Barangay Pogo Grande, and one from Perez Boulevard, all in Dagupan. One resides in Barangay Tocok in San Fabian, Pangasinan.

The mayor added that residents should not be alarmed if there are more cases in the next days, as the city began its risk-based mass testing last May 27 using the reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) method.

More than 700 Dagupan frontliners were already swabbed for RT-PCR testing.

Lim said they are swabbing 200 frontliners from the healthcare industry and other critical sectors every day and will do so for the next 4 weeks. 

The Dagupan City Health Office will be temporarily closed starting Monday, June 1, for disinfection.

Prior to the 5 new cases on Sunday, Dagupan had no active cases already as its first 10 cases recovered, while one died because of COVID-19. – Rappler.com