Local officials on Friday, July 16, called on the Duterte administration to send more vaccines and health experts as the city prepared to step up measures under the national government’s strictest quarantine classification.
They said these should be done quickly given that Cagayan de Oro has been identified as one of the new battlegrounds in the campaign against COVID-19 and its highly infectious Delta variant.
The city and neighboring Gingoog City in Misamis Oriental province were placed under enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) after health authorities confirmed that six COVID-19 patients from these cities had the more transmissible Delta variant.
Misamis Oriental has been placed under general community quarantine (GCQ) from the less stricter modified GCQ (MGCQ) classification.
Mayor Oscar Moreno announced no drastic changes in the city’s quarantine measures yet, but he was set on meeting with key health officials in the city and Northern Mindanao to go over the ECQ guidelines set by the COVID-19 Inter-Agency Task Force (IATF).
But Moreno made it clear during the daily COVID-19 press briefing at city hall in Thursday afternoon that he was not keen on temporarily stopping public transportation because that would adversely affect the city’s workers.
He said they have yet to discuss exactly how to implement the quarantine rules under the ECQ classification as of this posting.
Moreno and Deputy Speaker Rufus Rodriguez, representative of Cagayan de Oro’s 2nd District, said the city needed to intensify the local vaccination program, but this cannot be done with limited vaccine supplies.
“Only with more vaccines can we protect the residents of Cagayan de Oro,” Moreno said.
He said city hall was preparing to inoculate more people in the coming days.
Rodriguez, for his part, appealed to the Department of Health (DOH) and the IATF to immediately send experts to Cagayan de Oro to help local authorities keep the Delta variant from spreading.
Rodriguez also called on the IATF to make sure that quarantine measures under the ECQ would be strictly imposed in the city.
He said he was worried because research showed that the mutations have made it easier for the variant to infect human cells. – Rappler.com
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