DAVAO CITY—One government office here has been locked down and more of these pocket lockdowns would be applied anew due to rising cases of Covid-19 infections.
However, Michelle Schlosser, spokesman of the City Covid-19 Task Force, did not identify the government office. The physician added it was closed for operation since January 9 due to high infection among its personnel.
“As much as possible we would not do a total lockdown. We would be doing granular lockdown in areas with a significantly increasing number of cases. As of the moment, we implemented lockdown of an office starting last January 9 because of the high number of cases),” Schlosser said.
The city has been applying pocket lockdowns since last year: from household to residential compounds and streets. It has not applied total lockdown. Mayor Sara Duterte-Carpio has previously said that she was not amenable to closing down establishments or economic activities that were already allowed to open or operate.
From a daily average of infection of less than five in December, cases began to shoot rapidly by January 3 with 16 cases and positivity rate of five percent, to a high of 380 cases last Friday and a positivity rate of 33.
There was no confirmation yet of an omicron case and reports said cases were still local cases. During the last three days, however, residents who were stranded in Manila and overseas Filipinos were already among the positive cases here, raising suspicion of an omicron spread already.
Image credits: davaocity.gov.ph