KORONADAL CITY - The South Cotabato Medical Society (Socomed) has asked Governor Reynaldo Tamayo Jr. to place the entire province under enhanced community quarantine amid the spike in the number of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) cases.
which had set an alarm for the health care capacity of the local hospitals in the province.
Socomed President Dr. Rachele Suarez Uy said the medical community in the province has expressed alarm on the increasing number of COVID-19 cases in the province wherein at least 23 COVID-19 cases were reported on a single day last Tuesday, September 8.
The new cases brought to 200 the number of COVID-19 confirmed cases in South Cotabato.
Uy said the upsurge of COVID-19 cases has adversely affected the manpower capability of the local hospitals since more than 100 medical personnel from the different local hospitals in the province were also currently under quarantine.
She said contact-tracing efforts were also affected after 36 of the 55 personnel of the City Health Office here were placed under quarantine.
She stressed that the positivity rate of COVID-19 cases conducted at the Dr. Arturo Pingoy Medical Center was placed at 57 percent after 27 positive cases were tested out of the 47 swab samples tested through the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) machine.
She said the medical community of South Cotabato urged the governor to take drastic actions to arrest the spike in local transmission by placing the entire province under ECQ.