DAVAO CITY—Mayor Sara Duterte-Carpio has extended the air travel ban to and from this city after the first ban expires on April 1, as government health authorities warned that coronavirus 2019 (Covid-19) cases in this city could possibly spike.
Duterte-Carpio issued Executive Order 22 on Monday morning extending the suspension of air travel until the state of public health emergency, or the state of calamity, is lifted.
She said the extended travel ban may be shortened, or further extended, upon the recommendation of epidemiologists and experts on infectious diseases providing primary advice to the mayor and the Regional Task Force on Covid-19, of which, Duterte-Carpio is the chairman.
The mayor said she has been urging the doctors to make the recommendation over the weekend and when they answered, they advised for an extension “as they continue to widen the contact tracing of people who were at the Matina Galleria cockpit from March 9 to 13, “where a number of persons have become ill and have died due to Covid-19.”
The multimillion-peso, multi-cock derby event was being held alongside the annual Araw ng Dabaw festivities on March 16, which the mayor has suspended, along with other events, to avoid Covid-19 spread.
Those placed under the category of persons under investigation for showing the symptoms, of which at least three have died, pointed at their presence at the cockpit arena for likely getting the infection. The incident has now been seen as the origin of the local transmission of the Covid-19 here.
“The doctors are now [searching for] those who were..[at] the cockpit, and [especially for] those who were [possibly infected]…” she said on her regular radio program on Monday. “The doctors have confirmed that there is now a community transmission,” she warned.
Duterte-Carpio said, however, that the quarantine period has lapsed on Friday “and if they did not show any symptoms, they have not contracted the disease. But the doctors are enhancing their contact-tracing on those people,” she added.
The problem would come from Manila, where she said, its travel ban would expire earlier. “It depends on whether or not it would extend the ban, or lift it, we have to prepare.”
“The doctors and other people here are making a system to ensure that people coming from Manila, or elsewhere, would have their details in place so that when symptoms emerge, it is easy to trace them,” Duterte-Carpio said. “We have to consider all of them as PUIs [persons under investigation],” she added.
Duterte-Carpio dismissed the likelihood though of declaring an enhanced community quarantine, although she said the city was technically implementing it. “The features are there except that we still allow public transport and some companies and business establishments to operate.”
However, Duterte-Carpio has ordered the distribution of the food and medicine pass, a revised name for the regularly referred quarantine pass issued by several local governments. “But remember, this would be implemented during an enhanced community quarantine, which we are not still in.”
She said, “it would be soon implemented if people would only follow what the doctors advised on physical distancing, staying at home, wearing of face masks in public and regular washing of hands,” she said. “We are not seeing it, however, in our markets.”
Duterte-Carpio said that police and barangay personnel would soon install a public address system to constantly remind market-goers of physical distancing.
She said it would be the doctors who would decide on it, if they see that the city would need a more stringent measure to force people to stay in their homes. She said food rations were beginning to be distributed to the homes.
“I gave a timeline to the doctors on when to end the quarantine and they said it would be done by April and only if people would obey the protocols,” Duterte-Carpio said.
“In case we have to go on an enhanced community quarantine, again, I ask you not to panic. Because when you panic, you risk further transmission of the disease because your panic usually takes you to converge in markets and stores to panic-buying,” she said.
Duterte-Carpio said she would expect people to swarm the markets and stores as soon as she would end her radio interview.
Meanwhile, Duterte-Carpio issued a stern warning to residents “who would put to shame our health personnel and other frontliners.”
“Just like those who violate other protocols like curfew, these people would be charged and dealt with accordingly,” she said, citing an incident when a resident threw water at a nurse and cursed her as “virus.”
“The police would not hesitate to make arrests because they have been told that this is a state of public health emergency and they have to implement the law with urgency and immediacy,” Duterte-Carpio said.
She said she already talked to two private hospitals here, Davao Doctors’ Hospital and San Pedro Hospital, to help avoid further congestion at the Southern Philippines Medical Center, designated as primary hospital to cater to Covid-19 cases.
“I told them they can help by accepting non-Covid-19 cases. They can decide on their own without referring cases to the SPMC,” Duterte-Carpio said. The city government last week has also directed them to allot 10 percent of their capacity to indigent patients to unload the SPMC of this responsibility.
Duterte-Carpio assured them that they would be spared from handling Covid-19 cases “to protect our health workers from widespread contamination.” However, also last week, she disclosed that one private hospital defied this privilege when an informant of the mayor tipped her about the hospital taking in a Covid-19 patient.
She warned that the hospital risked being designated a Covid-19 center. There was no report yet of what happened to the hospital.
She said some of the personal protective equipment were sent to the two private hospitals for use by the nurses at the infectious diseases unit and the bulk of them to Davao del Norte, the next locality with a big population.
The protective equipment were donated by China and coursed through its consulate general here.
1 comment
Since Filipinos are too stubborn, they should try doing reverse psychology. What they should do, is tell people to go out or free to go out whenever and wherever they want, and if they catch disease, military will be given lisence to shoot them, no questions ask…