DAVAO CITY — Presidential daughter, Mayor Sara Duterte-Carpio, said she will skip attending the fifth State of the Nation Address (SONA) of her father, President Duterte to avoid the cumbersome process of going through the swab testing and 14-day mandatory quarantine that she herself has imposed on Davao-bound passengers to control the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19).
In an interview aired over Davao City Disaster Radio (DCDR 87.5) on Wednesday, Carpio, who attended the previous SONAs except for last year, said she would rather stay in the city than travel to Manila to watch her father address the nation.
“Not now, not in the time of the pandemic,” she said.
The local chief executive said she did not want to get swabbed for reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) test, and undergo a mandatory 14-day quarantine upon returning to the city.
“None, I don’t have plans of getting RT-PCR (reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction) test when I return to Davao. It’s one thing that I do not want to do because I heard it’s very uncomfortable. I have never tried getting tested through RT-PCR,” she said.
Carpio put herself on self-quarantine last March 12, a day after her meeting in Manila with Senator Sherwin Gatchalian, who came in direct contact with COVID-19 patient, to discuss “important matters for Davao City”.
“And, of course, I would have to be in quarantine for 14 days, so that is something that I do not want to do again because I have already experienced that,” she said.
Unlike in previous SONAs, the local government will no longer stream live Duterte’s SONA on Monday to avoid gathering of people.
But Carpio encouraged the Dabawenyos to listen to the President’s speech to get informed on the efforts of the national government, particularly Executive Branch, to combat the COVID-19 pandemic in the country.
The latest COVID-19 cases of the Davao Region were returning residents from Manila.
Of the 23 new cases reported on July 21, nine of whom are locally stranded individuals, four returning overseas Filipinos, and 10 local cases.
As of Tuesday, the Department of Health-Davao reported a total of 993 cases with 43 deaths and 552 recoveries. Of the total cases, 702 are in Davao City, 100 in Davao del Norte, 36 in Davao del Sur, 67 in Davao de Oro, 77 in Davao Oriental, and 11 in Davao Occidental.