Cebu City will remain under enhanced community quarantine to prevent the further spread of COVID-19 in the area, President Rodrigo Duterte said on Wednesday past midnight.
Duterte said Metro Manila would also remain under general community quarantine as would nearby provinces Cavite and Rizal.
“Cebu is now the hot spot for COVID… Marami sa inyo hindi sumunod,” Duterte said in a televised briefing following a meeting of the Inter-Agency Task Force on Emerging Infectious Diseases in Malacanang.
Prior to the President’s announcement, the IATF informed the local government units about their possible quarantine status to give way to appeals.
Two weeks ago, Duterte placed Cebu City under enhanced community quarantine while its neighboring city of Talisay was placed under modified ECQ.
The rest of the country was either under general community quarantine or modified GCQ.
Duterte earlier criticized the Cebuanos for being too slow in complying with the national government’s measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19. He described the Cebuanos as hardheaded and said they were too confident and complacent about the situation.
Though the residents eventually complied with the protocols, the arrival of overseas Filipino workers and stranded individuals from Metro Manila overwhelmed the city’s quarantine facilities, resulting in more infections, according to Environment Secretary Roy Cimatu, who was tasked by Duterte to oversee the containment measures in Cebu City.
Still, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday that the Philippines is doing “relatively well” in its handling of the public health emergency compared to other nations.
“We are happy that the Philippines went into a very early lockdown which actually helped prevent possibly hundreds of thousands of cases and thousands of deaths,” WHO Representative in the Philippines Dr. Rabindra Abeyasinghe said in a televised briefing.
Abeyasinghe also urged the Philippines to strengthen its contact tracing, isolation and quarantining efforts.
“There is improvement in the last month but it’s not keeping pace with the pace of the expansion of the testing capacity,” he said. “Also, the compliance with the guidelines coming from the DOH [Department of Health] doesn’t seem to be universally good.”