DAVAO CITY – Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte said Monday that the city government will intensify efforts to prevent the dreaded "second wave" of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) that is currently affecting areas in the National Capital Region (NCR) and Cebu where cases of new variants have been reportedly increasing.

Duterte said during her live program over Davao City Disaster Radio (DCDR 87.5) that local authorities are taking drastic measures this early so that the surge in NCR and Cebu may not reach the city.

“We’ve seen cases in NCR and Cebu are going up. They will most likely be the potential surge here in our city,” she said.

Local health officials noted a decreasing trend in the number of COVID-19 cases beginning the first week of February. As of March 21, Department of Health (DOH)-Davao reported 10 new cases in the city, bringing the total to 13,532 cases in the city, with 326 active, 12,548 recoveries, and 658 deaths.

She said that the city is set to implement the mandatory “test before travel” policy for all in-bound passengers effective Tuesday, and has intensified community surveillance and contact-tracing.

Duterte said the passengers must be prevented from boarding the aircraft at the airport of origin without a valid negative reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction machine (RT-PCR) result, taken within 72 hours before flying to Davao International Airport (DIA)

But Duterte added that all RT-PCR test results will be verified upon landing at DIA. Passengers with invalid or fake swab test results will need to undergo RT-PCR test at their expense, and will face charges for falsification, according to her.

She added that health authorities here have already conducted more aggressive surveillance efforts in communities to detect individuals, who manifest influenza-like symptoms such as fever, colds, and cough, and will subject them immediately to reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) test regardless of whether they have been exposed to a positive case or not.

She said the local government is also reviewing the contact-tracing system to immediately capture the close contacts of the index cases.

“These were the challenges when we had so many cases during our first wave. The contact-tracing was always delayed, and we’re counting days before we’re finally able to track down close contact of the positive cases,” Duterte said.

She said that the temporary treatment and monitoring facilities are also on-standby while the local government has committed to purchase more medical equipment using the city’s disaster funds for the private hospitals as requested by the Department of Health (DOH)-Davao.

“We are fast-tracking the procurement so that we can give it to them before the possible second wave. I call it possible because we would like to prevent it,” she said.

Health authorities in the country detected an increasing number of cases of South African and UK variants in the NCR and Cebu, including the latest variant called “P-3” that was first detected in the Philippines.