CEBU CITY – Resources here are already depleted that it can no longer support another round of lockdown, the chief of the Emergency Operations Center (EOC) of this city said.
City Councilor Joel Garganera was responding to queries on whether the city can still afford to impose another lockdown due to surging cases of COVID-19.
“If ever it (lockdown) will happen then we cannot do anything about it. But this I tell you when it comes to resources, it is not like before and it will be a very big problem. That’s why we have to open the economy because we no longer have the capability to support the needs of the people,” Garganera said.
For the past months, this city has been under Modified General Community Quarantine (MGCQ) but the threat of another imposition of a stricter community quarantine loomed due to the increasing COVID-19 cases.
Last Friday, July 22, the city tallied 146 new cases, increasing the total actives cases to 1,769. The city also had four new deaths as well as 124 recoveries on that day.
With the increasing cases, Garganera appealed to the public to cooperate in the campaign to contain the spread of the virus.
Garganera admitted that the utilization rate of health care facilities has gone over 50 percent.
“On June 1, our utilization rate in private hospitals was around 13 percent but on July 1, it reached 35 percent and now we’re playing around 50 to 55. So we can see that there is a huge increase but I trust our health personnel. They are doing their best, they’ve been there before but our appeal is for the public to cooperate,” Garganera said.