DAVAO CITY—Some 1,593 Covid-19 cases here have been allowed on supervised home isolation as health authorities said there were already several homes with more than one, if not all, members that have been infected with the virus.
Home isolation has been given the green light as the new mode of quarantine rather than sending infected patients to the government designated isolation and quarantine facilities.
Mayor Sara Duterte-Carpio also disclosed that 704 houses have been locked down in the process.
The mayor said this was the report as of Monday, as she disclosed that Davao Covid-19 Task Force has approved the home isolation for Covid-19 patients, whose mild or moderate symptoms were manageable and do not require hospitalization.
She said the health personnel have conducted the testing and tracing and recommending the isolation and quarantine of the patients.
Of the 704 house lockdowns, some have one or more Covid-19 positive patients, “which could attest that household transmission remains high amid the city’s surge of Covid-19 cases,” she said.
The mayor said 12 buildings, four compounds, and one school are currently on lockdown also. The city government utilized 1,108 security personnel from the National Police, police auxiliary, barangay tanods, and Public Safety Security Command Center to enforce strict compliance by the infected persons of the protocols, such as being prohibited from going out of their homes.
Dr. Michelle Schlosser, spokesman of the Davao Covid-19 Task Force, said they have regularly communicated with the barangay captains and other village functionaries such as the members of the Barangay Health Emergency Response Teams (BHERTs), Safety and Security Cluster (National Police), City Health Office, and district health offices to strengthen and monitor the lockdowns in households.
Dr. Schlosser confirmed that in some households, transmission has infected all members of a family. She blamed the high transmission among family members to the increasing number of family and social gatherings, such as birthdays and reunions.
“If you truly love your friends, your family, this is not the right time to hold a social gathering. We have social-media platforms. Let’s keep ourselves from physical social gatherings being the cause of the surge of household transmission,” she said.
As of September 27, Davao City has 9,084 active Covid-19 cases. Since March last year, 49,000 persons here have been infected and 1,498 have already died, the city information office said.