San Juan City Mayor Francis Zamora called on the Department of Health (DOH) to tag COVID-19 patients based on their residences and not based on the address of the hospital where they are being treated.
“I’m hoping that the DOH will consider tagging these patients based on their address hindi po base sa address ng hospital para maging malinaw (I’m hoping that the DOH will consider tagging these patients based on their address and not based on the hospital address to be clear),” Zamora said at the Laging Handa Press Briefing on Thursday.
Zamora said San Juan City will remain on alert level 4 if the tagging of patients will be based on the hospital’s address.
“Dito sa San Juan, ang aming alert level po ay 4 ngunit yan ay dahil meron kaming isang malaking tertiary hospital, ang Cardinal Santos Medical Center, na marami hong COVID patients na hindi naman ho taga san Juan (Here in San Juan our alert level is 4 but that is because we have a large tertiary hospital, the Cardinal Santos Medical Center with many COVID patients who are not from San Juan),” he said.
“Ibig sabihin, posibleng taga Metro Manila, posibleng taga ibang probinsya ngunit ang datos ng kanilang mga kaso ay napupunta sa San Juan kung kaya tumataas po ang aming alert level (This means that they may be from Metro Manila, they may be from other provinces, but the data of their cases go to San Juan, so our alert level is high),” he added.
The city mayor appealed to the patients to report based on their home addresses.
“Kaya ang aking pong panawagan ay sana itong mga pasyente ho na nandito sa ating mga hospitals sa Metro Manila pati ho sa San Juan magtala based on their residence hindi ho base sa address ng ospital sapagkat kinakailangan nating magkaroon ng iisang objective and clear data ano ba talaga ang alert level (So my appeal is for patients who are here in our hospitals in Metro Manila as well as in Sa Juan to base their record on their residence not based on the address of the hospital because we need to have an objective and clear data on what alert level we are really in),” he said.
Zamora added that if the same tagging system will continue, San Juan will remain under Alert level 4 and no indoor and outdoor activities will be allowed.