For their exemplary service for the past two years amid the Covid-19 pandemic, the Pasig City local government recognized on Friday, July 29, the healthcare frontliners of the centralized isolation facility in Rizal High School (RHS).

In a social media post, Pasig City Mayor Vico Sotto paid tribute to the frontliners, sharing photos of a small awarding ceremony at the RHS.

The frontliners were each given certificates of appreciation from the local government.

"Words cannot express how thankful, how proud I am of these people," Sotto said.

Sotto recalled the beginnings of the centralized quarantine facility, and the plans they made in the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic.

He said three staff of the Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office (DRRMO) approached him with a proposal to convert the RHS to a centralized quarantine facility, weeks before the first enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) was implemented in Metro Manila in March 2020.

"Nung panahon na ‘yon, tinawanan pa kami ng iba, OA daw. Pero pina-go namin ang plano (At the time, people laughed at us. We were overreacting, they said. But we gave the go signal to the plan)," Sotto said.

"People came together -- our staff, medical professionals, private sector partners -- and miracles were performed to establish a 10-building Centralized Quarantine Facility," he added.

The RHS facility was inspected and approved by the Department of Health (DOH) after just one week of its completion.

It officially opened to patients around May 2020.

This is where Pasig residents who cannot self-isolate at home are sent, as determined by the City Epidemiological Surveillance Unit (CESU).

Patients are only let out after they have fully recovered and have been cleared by the in-house doctors in the facility.

The quarantine facilities in Pasig have served a total of 13,850 Pasigueños to date, Sotto said.

Around 9,284 individuals were treated in the RHS facility, and 4,566 sought quarantine services at both the Daisy Drive Inn Hotel and the Dahlia Hotel Pasig.

The aforementioned hotels were converted to quarantine areas by the local government in order to adequately accommodate Covid-19 positive individuals that cannot self-isolate in their homes.

The RHS facility can hold some 1,000 people, while the Dahlia Hotel can host 300.