Bringing the fight against the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic down to the barangay level has yielded positive results for the government, an official of the National Task Force Against COVID-19 said Wednesday night.
NTF chief implementer Carlito Galvez Jr. bared that the continuous downward trend in the number of daily COVID-19 cases can be attributed to the localization of the National Action Plan (NAP) since the ordinary people were able to understand that keeping themselves safe and following the minimum health standards are big contributions to the campaign to combat the contagion.
"Ang change of behavior ay napakaimportante sa kaalaman ng ating mga mamamayan. Nakita po natin maganda po ang ating change of tactics na ginawa. Talagang ang lumalaban sa ating pandemya ay 'yung ating taumbayan (The change of behavior among our people is really important. We have seen that the change of tactics that we made bore good fruit. The ones fighting the pandemic now is our people)," Galvez said in a televised meeting with President Duterte.
Galvez cited the "improved" situation in Cebu City where it successfully brought down its COVID-19 cases to a manageable level after being considered a "hotspot" of infections back in June.
As of Wednesday, the Department of Health (DOH) said Cebu City has a total of 10,353 confirmed cases but only 275 remained active. About 90.9 percent (9,416) of its total cases have recovered while 6.4 percent (662) died.
"Mr. President Mayor, 'yung Cebu kinakagalitan niyo pa po kasi talagang matigas ang ulo pero nakita po natin ngayon ang ganda ng performance ng Cebu (Mr. President Mayor, you used to scold Cebu City because they were hard-headed but we've seen now that they have a good performance)," Galvez told Duterte, even bragging that Cebu City recorded zero casualty last week.
The chief implementer also commended the local chief executives in Metro Manila for its performance in the fight against COVID-19 pandemic.
He said that Metro Manila was able to reduce its active cases from 20,000 in September to just 7,830 this month.
"Ibig sabihin nama-manage na po ng ating LGUs (This means that our local government units have managed )," Galvez stated.
Bataan province, which was recently visited by Galvez, has also been successful in its COVID-19 campaign. He said the local government of Bataan was able to reduce its COVID-19 cases from 800 to 300.
Bataan's 1:15 contact tracing ratio also fared better than most of the provinces in Central Luzon (Region 3).
"Once na tuloy-tuloy na maipababa hanggang barangay level ang implementasyon ng NAP ay magiging maganda po ang ating mga kaso. Bababa po ang mga kaso natin at pwede po tayong mag-angat ng ating ekonomiya (Once the localization of the NAP continues, our numbers will improve. The cases will go down and we can open the economy further)," Galvez said.