CEBU CITY, Philippines – After the Central Visayas police – under the orders of the Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) – suddenly suspended quarantine passes on last week, the city began distributing new passes last Friday, June 26, to at least 178,000 households.

As of Monday, June 29, not all barangays have distributed new passes to residents.

Previously there were 250,000 passes distributed to the city’s 80 barangays.

What will be different? Under Executive Order 082-A, issued by Mayor Edgar Labella on June 27, there will only be 178,000 passes distributed and these will be coded so that not everyone can be out on the same day.

Under the new scheme, coding passes that end in odd numbers (1, 3, 5, 7 and 9) will be out on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, while even numbers (2, 4, 6, 8, 0) will only be allowed out on Tuesdays, Thursday and Saturdays.

On Sundays, no one will be out.

This was after the joint task force said that too many people in Cebu City were going out at the same time under the old quarantine pass scheme, which gave one pass per household.

All car passes will also be suspended because the quarantine passes will be used to allow passage by foot or vehicle.

Who is exempt? Frontline health workers, cargo delivery workers, business process outsourcing employees, and government workers will still be allowed to travel with their company ID and certificate of employment.

Cebu is currently the only city that is still under enhanced community quarantine due to the continued rising number of cases in the city.

As of Sunday, June 28, there are 4,962 cases in Cebu City, while there are 1,052 in Cebu Province.

The island was named one of 6 emerging hot spots in the coronavirus outbreak by the Department of Health and was placed under the control of Environment Secretary Roy Cimatu to contain, after local officials failed to halt the rising number of cases.

The Armed Forces of the Philippines, Philippine National Police, Barangay officials, and other force multipliers have been added to the city to enforce the lockdown. – Rappler.com