DAVAO CITY—This city would maintain a “liberal’ attitude in the enforcement of the guidelines in handling the surge in Covid-19 cases, concentrating on observance of minimum health protocols rather than restricting movement of people and closing down shops in accordance to certain alert levels.
“It is difficult to close and open and close again the establishments for every surge that we experience,” said Mayor Sara Duterte-Carpio in her regular Monday radio program.
She said she already told the City Task Force on Covid-19 to ensure compliance of the minimum health protocols. “It is mask and distancing that we are concentrating on,” she said.
The same liberal handling would go to bars and entertainment joints. “There would be no closure of establishments, including bars and joints.”
“Except that they are not allowed to serve liquors anytime of the day. That has been our policy then even when we eased our policy on alcoholic drinks,” she added.
Duterte-Carpio said she already discussed with mall owners that the city would not close down establishments merely on the basis of the the recommendation of the national government on its alert levels in certain localities.
“When we always open and then close them and again open them again, we can never untangle ourselves from this pandemic. We have to learn to live with it,” she added.
She said there may be issues on her order to be liberal in the enforcement of the guidelines for Alert Level 3 classification but said she would wait for any statement or a “show cause” order from the InterAgency Task Force on Covid-19.
Davao City has been on another surge, its fourth, alongside with the national surge, partly blamed on the holiday gatherings and partly on the infection by the Omicron variant. Duterte-Carpio said there was still no confirmation from the genome sequencing “but the way the surge is going, it’s not far-fetched that it’s Omicron.”
“But whether it’s Omicron, Delta or what, we have to maintain our management strategy given by the Department of Health,” she said.
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 on Friday and a positivity rate of 33 percent and 493 on Sunday but with a lower 24 percent positivity rate.
Despite the surge, she said the city’s 2,744 total number of isolation and holding rooms for positive cases have remained manageable, with utilization rate of 45 percent.
The city has vaccinated 1,268,468 residents on first dose, which is 97.58 percent from the herd immunity target. Some 1,207,885 have already taken their second dose, which is 92.92 percent from target herd immunity.