DOH 7: Infected Barangays to Have Sequential Lockdowns

The Department of Health 7 (DOH 7) proposed the guidelines in implementing “sequential lockdown” for barangays with a high number of COVID-19 cases in Cebu CIty, Mandaue City, and Lapu-Lapu City.

DOH 7 regional director Dr. Jaime Bernadas proposed the guidelines to the Regional Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF-EID).

The guidelines will serve as reference for Local Government Units (LGUs) in the cities of Cebu, Mandaue, and Lapu-Lapu.

The guidelines is composed of three quarantine statuses and is based on the number of COVID-19 cases and the antibody prevalence percentage ratio based on the immunoglobulin G (IgG) and immunoglobulin M (IgM) of patients who underwent rapid antibody diagnostic test (RDT).

IgM and mixed IgM+IgG positive is a marker that a person’s body is reacting to a virus while the IgG is a marker that a person has previously been exposed to a virus.

A barangay is considered “green” if there are no confirmed COVID-19 case and zero percent of antibody IgM and IgM+IgG prevalence, the area will be placed in General Community Quarantine (GCQ).

The orange status has two levels, first level if there are 1 to 25 COVID-19 cases in the barangay and 0.1% to 1.0% of lgM and lgM+lgG and second level if there 26 to 50 COVID-19 cases and with 1.1% to 5.0% percent antibody IgM or IgM+IgG prevalence. The barangay will be placed on Modified Enhanced Community Quarantine (MECQ).

And red status if the barangay has more than 50 cases of COVID-19 and with more than 5% percent antibody IgM or IgM+IgG prevalence. A barangay with red status will be placed under Enhanced Community Quarantine (ECQ).

The barangays affected must provide at least one barangay isolation center and create a COVID-19 recovery surveillance for COVID-19 patients. (ASC)