Cebu City Village Chiefs ‘Obliged’ to Do Job Vs. Covid-19

Environment Secretary Roy Cimatu on Wednesday pressed the barangay captains here to do their job to reduce the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) cases in their respective jurisdictions and graduate from the enhanced community quarantine (ECQ).

“It will be the call of the barangay captains. This time, we will give the leaders, give the responsibility to the barangay captain and I think they are also ready and willing to do their job as barangay captain,” Cimatu said during the virtual presser after a meeting with the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF-EID) and Cabinet secretaries in Mandaue City.

According to him, the city has around 20 villages that are placed under lockdown until their coronavirus cases subside.

He said he required the barangay captains to meet a threshold he assigned to them before the IATF decides on the lifting of their lockdown status. He, however, did not elaborate on the threshold he assigned to the local officials.

“They (barangay captains) have to be on the guard para hindi na babalik yung (so that there would be no more recurring) infections,” he stressed.

Meanwhile, Cimatu prodded the Department of Health (DOH) in Central Visayas and the Cebu City Health Department (CCHD) to harmonize their figures on Covid-19 cases for better reference in arriving at decisions.

Cimatu cited the incident on Tuesday, a day before Cabinet secretaries arrived in Cebu for the IATF meeting in Mandaue City, where the CCHD reported 353 “new Covid-19 cases” in just one day.

“Actually, that is one of the subjects na pinag-usapan (that we discussed). We were discussing biglang nag-shoot up yung ang cases yesterday umaabot ng 353 case isang araw lang (the sudden shoot up of cases yesterday reaching 353 in one just a single day),” Cimatu said, noting that the normal average in the past only reached 190.

He said the data that the agencies have presented will be returned to them “to reconcile” the figures on confirmed coronavirus cases.

“So that (in) the meantime, I will only be using for the moment, yung city figures hangga’t hindi tayo magkatugmatugma lahat (those city figures until they have not been reconciled yet),” he added.

DOH-Central Visayas regional director, Dr. Jaime Bernadas, admitted that the data released on Wednesday showed a sudden spike in coronavirus cases.

He, however, explained that the data released by the DOH-7 are already “clean data” as the data from the CCHD was “still an accumulation of cases of the past five days”.

He urged the CCHD officials to call his office to regularly reconcile their data.

Mayor Edgardo Labella admitted that the data released on Wednesday were an accumulation of the “past nine days.”

The cases were the result of the June 22 to 30 swab tests. “There were only around 39 cases average per day but appeared as if it was a result of swab test in one day,” he added.

Meanwhile, Police Regional Office-Central Visayas regional director Brig. Gen. Albert Ignatius Ferro said a team of contact tracing experts from Baguio City is coming to Cebu to help them establish a system in tracing suspected coronavirus-infected individuals.

Ferro said Mayor Benjamin Magalong expressed his commitment to helping the city in their contact tracing efforts, which Labella wanted to be maximized alongside the aggressive testing in villages. (PNA)