DAVAO CITY – Mayor Sara Duterte is not inclined to put Davao City under the Enhanced Community Quarantine (ECQ) despite the recommendation of the health cluster of the local government’s coronavirus disease (COVID-19) Task Force to revert to the most stringent quarantine status amid the surge of infections.
During her program over Davao City Disaster Radio (DCDR 87.5) on Monday, Duterte said that she asked the health cluster to review their criteria for recommending ECQ, using the same parameters from the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF-EID).
She added she has no expectations of the city reverting to ECQ as of yet.
She said that the local government would only discuss the recommendation if the result of the review would show that the city would need to be placed on total lockdown to slow the transmission of the infections.
“We told the health group of the response cluster to review the criteria of an ECQ under the IATF... if our numbers would fall into that criteria of the IATF, so that they can present it better and then we can appeal our community quarantine classification right now, as announced recently, which is GCQ with heightened restrictions,” she said.
She added what the health group initially recommended are measures that can be done even without enforcing ECQ, without discussing details of the additional protocols that can be enforced in lieu of the ECQ.
According to the IATF-EID, Davao City, along with Davao del Norte, Davao de Oro, and Davao Occidental will remain under GCQ with heightened restrictions while Davao Oriental and Davao del Sur under normal GCQ until September 30.
As of Sunday, DOH-Davao reported 1,123 new cases, bringing the total cases to 73,632 cases with 14,651 active, 56,704 recoveries, and 2,277 deaths.
Out of the total cases, Davao City, the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic in Mindanao, logged 39,983 cases with 6,712 active, 39,983 recoveries and 1,246 deaths. Davao de Oro tallied 4,977 cases, Davao del Norte with 13,026, Davao del Sur with 7,509, Davao Occidental with 2,284, and Davao Oriental with 5,853.