Work at City Hall cut short

CEBU, Philippines — Work at the Cebu City Hall suddenly got shortened to half a day after Mayor Edgardo Labella ordered an immediate disinfection of the different offices after some workers tested positive for COVID-19.

The employees are assigned in the Engineering Department, Office of the Building Official, and the Sangguniang Panglungsod.

“I instructed Atty. (Floro) Casas to immediately issue a memorandum nga half day lang una ang mga buhatan sa City Hall tanan para sa massive disinfection,” said Labella.

City Hall went on lockdown yesterday and would be closed until today or tomorrow.

Labella said disinfection may continue today and tomorrow if everything will not be done in a single day to ensure that offices will be disinfected properly.

Even his office, the mayor said, will also undergo another disinfection after a staff member also contracted the virus.

At the moment, Cebu City has a total of 3,316 active cases, including 143 new ones, based on the Department of Health-VII case bulletin on March 4.

Cebu City also got 39 additional recoveries, but it also got two more deaths.

In the Emergency Operations Center’s (EOC) own monitoring, the city has only 2409 active cases and 381 others for validation of recovery.

The active cases are reported in 70 barangays. Cebu City has 80 barangays.

The 10 other barangays, on the other hand, reported no virus transmission in the last 10 days.

Positivity rate right now is at 9.86 percent out of the 1,451 tested on March 4.The city recorded a positivity rate as high as 19 percent last month. —KQD (FREEMAN)